Slashdot Mirror
Why All Boards Need a Technology Expert
New submitter ebonyygraham writes with an article at the Harvard Business Review about the dearth of IT savvy professionals in the boardroom. A few months ago I decided to look into the professional experience of non-executive directors at the major banks listed in Britain. Like almost every other major industry today, banking relies on hugely complex, enormously expensive technology. So I was curious as to whether the individuals charged with corporate governance would have any more than a layman's knowledge of IT. I discovered that only one bank had a board member with some direct experience in technology and in that case it was as a sales executive. I'm afraid this is typical not just in banking but across most major industries. Technology is the most important agent of change today; hardly any industry is immune to both its value-creating and disruptive potential. Yet I perceive a large gap between the direct experience of non-executive directors and the experience required to challenge and support chairmen and CEOs in their quest to bring the best technology to their business.
At this point their stranglehold is on the governments and the financial systems. Not technology, not bond-trading. Others can innovate and might even be much better than the banks in assessing risk/reward ratio. But as long as the others have to eat their losses, the banks will come out ahead.
It is not a bug there is no techie in the board. It is by design. They need diabolical monsters from the comic book super villains in the board, not techies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There is no "in their quest to bring the best technology to their business", because that's not their mission. They're there to make money. Even tech companies are there to make money. The technology rarely has anything to do with it. The coolest gizmo in the world won't make money without marketing and sales.
I use CNC machines in my side business of making guitars. My quest is to make money selling guitars. The CNC machine enables that, but it's not my quest to bring CNC machines to the masses. It's not even my quest to bring the latest guitar technology. Quite the opposite.
You're talking about BANKS, fer crying out loud....
Perhaps this is not the skill set that makes for the best tech minds.
That, and there's a virulent belief that IT can simply be outsourced.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
About a decade ago banks noticed that computer security becomes an issue (they are a clever bunch, after only losing a few billions they noticed that people want to steal money from them). So most, if not all, banks today have a position for a CISO in their C-Level portfolio.
The next step would probably be to actually also give him some kind of power to install and execute security processes. That's probably going to take another decade.
Why would you want to get in early in this fight? Wait for them to actually learn their lesson and then climb on board. Currently, in most banks, the CISO position is that of an ejector seat with someone else having the launch button. It's not comfy, believe me!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeaah ! 9 vs 1 sure he will survive against technical stupidity...
PS: I stepped down from this kind of position
IT is a blue-collar job. It's a trade. I know it, you know it, and the CEOs and boards sure as fuck know it.
Programming, Systems administration, Networking, etc, etc, is about skills, knowledge, application, results. It's about what you know, what you can do and not who you know.
Professional corporate white collar jobs like banking, finanice, accounting, law, etc are about bullshitting your way ahead and networking. They're about failing upwards and above all hiding your incompetence behind layers of social and professional obfuscation.
No fucking way is a tradesman of any kind getting near a corporate boardroom, much less a critical thinking one. Our job as tech experts is to try and make the systems these people demand as least destructful as we can, and clean up the mess when the whole house of cards eventually does fall in. Like everyone else of course, we also get the privilege of paying for it.
Would you expect executives to understand their telecom systems or how the plumbing works? It's infrastructure. You have people that manage it and provide reports. That's how a corporation works. The fact that the author mentions storing medical information in the cloud shows how clueless he is and is pushing an agenda.
When someone says technology is old and needs to be replaced because it's old does not truly understand technology. Age does not mean something needs to be replaced. Whether or not it gets the job done properly and efficiently is the point. It's a waste of resources to simply by something new. This joker does not understand that and is probably the reason why companies over spend on technology and then make drastic cut backs because they over spent.
Hraumph!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Consider yourself lucky if they don't outsource the whole operation to "Bob" in India (or just start putting everything "in the cloud" under the mistaken assumption that this automatically makes it secure).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
*blink*
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
There are a shitload of technologies out there and nobody is an expert in all of them. Sure, there needs to be tech-saavy people in leadership, but having a tech "expert" on the board is not always required. The board is not an island, they use input from experts outside the board all the time.
Why limit the position to an Information Technology expert? For example, if the company designs or manufactures hardware, why not have a "hardware expert" on the board?
My company's Board is stacked with cronies as they usually are. Usually pure "business" people with little technology background although we're one of the largest computer manufacturers. Their unsuccessful selection of 4 "business type" CEOs has been disastrous and will continue to be until the Board is cleaned up..
The problem will easily be fixed by putting more chicks on boards.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Boards don't understand much of anything usually, except finance. As far as technology goes, IT is at the bottom of the list of things that they should know about with technology. I'd be happy if the boards understood what the companies actually produced or supplied.
It's a blessing. And a curse.
We have support groups about this. But generally the meetings fall apart because we all argue about which of us is the smartest person in the room.