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."

Comments

I got it!

[Ol Olsoc]

We need Executives to be replaced with H1-B workers. The shareholders will be pleased. Capitalism demands it!

A consultant's experience

[Matt.Battey]

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.

Typical

[Crimey McBiggles]

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.

An aid or a barrier?

[sjbe]

"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.

Re:What else is new...

[drinkypoo]

So what else is new? Most "Global Business Leaders" don't know much about anything else,

So, you call it an ivory tower when it's intellectual, what do you call it when it's just a tower made of stacked-up money? The reason why "global business leaders" don't know about technology is that they are completely divorced from the daily life that normal humans live. They don't have to know shit, so they don't know shit. Then they want to tell us all about how to be successful. We're always having to endure quotes from Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, who both were born with silver spoons in their mouths, about how we can supposedly be successful — but they actually have no idea how to become successful, because they were born into positions of privilege. We should not give one tenth of one very small shit about what they think about becoming successful, because they never did.