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Global Business Leaders Say They Don't Know Enough About Technology To Succeed
Lemeowski writes: New Harvard Business Review research finds that only 45% of business leaders surveyed say they personally have the technology knowledge they need to succeed in their jobs. What's more, the survey of 436 global business leaders finds that only 23% are confident their organizations have the knowledge and skills to succeed in the digital aspects of their business. The report says that given the low levels of digital knowledge and skills outside of IT "it's troubling that close to half of all respondents (49%) said their department occasionally or frequently initiates IT projects with little or no direct involvement of IT."
Let's have executives compete in the global market!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
We need Executives to be replaced with H1-B workers. The shareholders will be pleased. Capitalism demands it!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
yet I'm no global CEO.
Coincidence?
That it's pretty hard work to make everybody's work easier by using a computer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If they don't know what they are doing, then why are they the leaders?
So what else is new? Most "Global Business Leaders" don't know much about anything else, yet some succeed due to blind luck and sheer force of money.
A man in a hot air balloon realised he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The woman below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude." "You must be an engineer," said the balloonist."I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."
The woman below responded, "You must be in Management." "I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."
Bring your IT in house and only hire the A+ IT guys, not by grade, but by skill.
We are suffering for generational nepotism of the worst sort. That period where the psychopaths of wall street were marrying the narcissists of Hollywood and producing a generation of, 'holy crap what a fiscal disaster'. The Paris Hilton (sorry to pick on some one in particular but hey, you want to make yourself famous for being it, then that is what you are going to be known for) generations.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
In my experience as a consultant, this is the case because Business Managers don't trust IT because:
1) The IT department inserts (perceived) too many non functional requirements on a project increasing cost or schedule.
1.a) (Perceived) The IT department doesn't care about the needs of the Business Manager's daily business.
2) Internally the IT department did not deliver on it's own projects within cost or schedule.
3) There's no way that an employee could be as smart as a consultant.
Having been a former IT employee and now a consultant, points 1, 1.a, & 2 are valid, point 3 is just bunk. Now being an consultant, I prefer to work with Business Managers because:
1) Business Managers have a vested interested in seeing a vendor project complete, where as IT typically does not, it's not their money or idea.
2) Business Managers will make time to meet with a vendor, where as IT typically think of vendors as hired hands, about as valuable as the lady who vaccuumes the floors every night.
The solution is to give them more money...
The problem I've seen happen over and over again is when the boss decides it's much simpler to bypass the technology department, create something as a rapidly developed prototype, and then leave the tech department to cleanup the aftermath. Maybe the IT department got a reputation for making things overly complicated, or they find communication with their own experts too difficult because they lean on the side of realism rather than optimism. In either case, the companies that act this way clearly do not have leaders who have confidence in their own people, and will repeatedly go through new staff for their "technology department" which would be better labeled "cost center" as far as any of said leaders are concerned.
Crimey
Most CEOs don't know enough about anything, except the cost of hookers & blow.
"it's troubling that close to half of all respondents (49%) said their department occasionally or frequently initiates IT projects with little or no direct involvement of IT."
That's typically because many IT departments rarely add value to what other departments are trying to accomplish. A good IT department's role is to facilitate and support the activities of other departments. Their job should be to ask "how can I help you accomplish your tasks?" The problem is that too many IT departments think their primary task is to control the network and IT resources without much regard paid to what other departments are trying to accomplish with those resources. IT too often thinks of itself as an end rather than a means. So it should surprise no one that many departments in many companies regard IT as a barrier to be worked around rather than a partner ready and willing to help.
This as awesome news because it means there's room for startups to be more efficient and compete with the goliaths.
These big lumbering goliath organizations move like icebergs. I don't know how things are in the rest of the world, but here in Australia you can go to the websites of our biggest and oldest retailers and find you can't even view their products let alone order them. Quite amazing since it's 2015.
both are showing the same thing: A disconnect of interests.
Now, whose job again was it to connect them, "align the noses" and get the great wheels turning?
Whose job again was it to pick what requirements at what levels? Whenever the project goes under in requirements hell it is because the wrong people made the wrong decisions on the wrong levels, or even failed to make any real choices at all.
Whose job again was it to hire people to do all that on various levels, and organise them in the various departments?
Consultancy is useful basically to paper over failures in the fabric of the organisation. But that only gets you so far. It isn't failing to understand the technology that's tripping up CEOs. It's failure to understand their own job, that of management.
Business leaders are not there to 'know enough' about technology. Their function is to hire the right experts to do that.
Of course, listening to those experts and making an effort to understand their recommendations *is* part of the leader's role.
"The problem is that too many IT departments think their primary task is to control the network and IT resources without much regard paid to what other departments are trying to accomplish with those resources. IT too often thinks of itself as an end rather than a means. So it should surprise no one that many departments in many companies regard IT as a barrier to be worked around rather than a partner ready and willing to help."
No, the problem is that because the business 'leaders' fear being found out that they are largely clueless, they marginalize their own IT people. Instead they hire in consultants at great expense and impose some half-arsed 'solution' onto the company. Do any IT people here seriously consider they have any real input into company policy.
Just look at the number of ways your typical application gets screwed up every time they release a new version. The most competent people are working at the call centers and they couldn't tell you the difference between climate and weather!
We know.
If one were building a skyscraper, certain aspects would be obvious -- even to management. Before installing the paneling in the penthouse, a foundation must be created and the parts of the building between the ground and the upper floors need some measure of completeness. And so on... to a great extent we all recognize what a building looks like and what minimum functions are needed. And we have millennia of practice in making things that mostly work...
IT is under no such constraints -- all the users (and phbs) see is the surface, the real guts are invisible. What is worse, IT is driven by fashion that changes with the seasons --- and technologies are frequently renamed and marketed anew as the latest great thing, and what you used to do is now hopelessly obsolete. So refactoring because skirts are short this season is as powerful a force as refactoring because the old ideas didn't work. This is nonsense to be sure -- there is slow progress but the hype tends to obscure it. And while re-usability through shared code has crept along, IT is a long way from the degree of standardization in the building trades.
So yes, from the perspective of IT, business management are technical idiots -- but IT has worked hard to keep it that way. High priests have much more cache than technicians.
That's what the fuckups always say.
This is EXACTLY the arrogant attitude that makes people not want to deal with their IT department.
I worked for a web design/hosting startup as the network manager. The boss' buddy set up an FTP server and it immediately got owned and we became a warez site
The question you should be asking is why didn't he go to his IT department first? Why didn't he trust them to listen to what he wanted and make it happen? There has to be a reason he thought his buddy would be more helpful. This is exactly what I would expect to see when people regard the IT department as an obstacle.
We don't want control of this stuff because we're control freaks. We want control of this stuff so that someone else doesn't get it horribly wrong.
First off I've dealt with WAY too many IT departments who actually ARE control freaks. Anecdotal to be sure but it's not hard to find examples. Second, you are missing the point. Yes IT can help get it right but that is not the problem. The problem is that they are seen as a barrier rather than an aid. They say "no" rather than "why don't we try this instead". I've seen far too many IT departments that treat their users as a burden to be endured rather than valued customers.
Wait, so nearly half of the CEOs that are being paid millions, have admitted they don't have the skills required to do their jobs properly?
Imagine for a moment that you told your manager you didn't have the skills to do your job.
Yeah, that's not the problem. The IT department is plumbing. The problem is that shitting is considered essential, so nobody grumbles about paying for plumbing because they know they need to shit, but nobody seems to realize that IT is also essential. It's not a value-add, it's a value-enabler. Without it, you don't have a business.
Every job is (or should be) vital to the company. Accounting isn't value added activity but it certainly is vital. Inventory management isn't value added but it certainly is vital. Of course IT is a sort of plumbing in a figurative sense. But the maintenance department which does real plumbing doesn't belittle company employees for not knowing how to hook up a toilet. They aren't perceived as a barrier to be worked around and there is a reason for that. IT departments far too often get in the way and are needlessly difficult to work with. What they do is important but it isn't the only important thing going on in a company.
They didn't even ask, they just set it up, and then it got owned because they didn't know half as much as they thought they did. And that's why we IT workers don't want people thinking they know what they're doing. Mostly they don't.
You're missing the important question which is WHY didn't the guy trust his IT department to handle it? Why did he feel the need to go around them in the first place? Whether he knew what he was doing or not is mostly irrelevant. The problem is that he didn't trust his IT department so he went around them. THAT is the root of the problem. The fact that he got owned later on is merely the symptom of the problem.
They say no to specific requests which are stupid.
I truly wish that were always true. Problem is that it isn't far too often. I've experienced first hand IT departments (usually in larger companies though not always) deny very practical reasonable requests made nicely because it "wasn't policy" and in some cases because they simply didn't want to. I've seen them verbally demean fellow employees which is never acceptable even when they are being stupid.
Stop coming to the IT department like you know what you're doing, tell them what you need to do, and you'll get the results you're looking for.
If I actually do know what I'm doing then it is perfectly reasonable for me to not pretend to be stupid. I should be polite and respectful but there is nothing wrong with me saying what I think, especially if I actually do know the answer. Ever called a helpdesk when you actually know what the problem is? I have. It is a very frustrating experience to be walked through a bunch of pointless nonsense by someone who isn't listening to what you are telling them. A lot of us out here actually do know what we are doing and know where the limits of our knowledge are. (sadly and to your point some other people don't but that's a separate issue) IT departments that demand you play dumb are another symptom of the problem.
Also, come to them when you first know that you have an IT need, not at the last minute.
Fine advice but not really relevant to the problem being discussed which is why IT departments are seen as a barrier to be worked around. Believe me I'm on the side of IT here but there are a lot of them that just don't seem to grok that they are either getting in the way or perceived to be difficult to work with. You can't change the behavior of others but it's unreasonable to expect others to change their behavior until you've done everything you can do.
Bro. Guy Consoglmo, one of the Vatican astronomers, who's been interviewed on NPR, among other places, and has been mentioned on /. before, also teaches at Catholic colleges around the US. One of the courses he teaches is "science for non-science majors". Some years back, he talked about the food chain of the majors that take that class. Next to the bottom were business majors, who didn't get it, but didn't let that worry them.
So, are they worried yet?
Btw, the bottom of the food chain are the communications majors, who didn't get it, and didn't know that they didn't get it. And these are the folks who go into journalism, and HR, and PR....
mark