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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!
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.
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.
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 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
"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.
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.