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.

Comments

Re:This one thing is unlike the other

[BVis]

That, and there's a virulent belief that IT can simply be outsourced.

That's not so much a belief as a truth. You can outsource your IT, firms exist to do that. You will probably save money doing that, and that's all that matters to the suits. Nevermind that now it takes three weeks to get a problem fixed instead of same-day, and your workers get so fed up with the lousy service the outsourced IT provides that they just let problems continue without asking for them to be fixed. This hurts your business in lost productivity.

But, productivity is hard to measure. Dollars are not, and the outsourcing saves dollars. This makes it a perfect solution for the folks that can't turn on their computers without a cheat sheet.