sascom voices - The sascom magazine blog

In a previous post, I described the ever-elusive goal of achieving alignment between Business and IT. On the one hand, we see some struggle between these groups, and on the other hand, we see that the lines between Business and IT are increasingly blurred. In fact, my conversations with CIOs and senior executive IT professionals also unearthed interesting strategies to address the colliding worlds of Business and IT.

There is a trend toward staffing IT departments with non-technical employees or “hybrids” (e.g., MBAs with some tech background). More and more, the pervasive thought of CIOs seems to be “I can teach the technology. But getting staff who understand business drivers and speak the same language as the business side of the house is harder to come by.”

One executive actually put it to the test. His team was responsible for technical requirements and for interfacing with the various business units within his organization. For multiple projects, he assigned two different types from his team (one IT and one MBA/business-oriented) to meet with the same business unit head.

This executive said that, invariably, his tech representatives would default to technical jargon in meetings with the business heads. By contrast, the business-oriented professionals were less sophisticated about the technology, but were successful in communicating with the business heads. The business guys glazed over when “Tech-ese” is being spoken. The result? The exec pulled the IT guys from those projects and has actively sought to staff his team with that rare, but highly-sought-after creature – MBAs with some background in technology.

For a more traditional approach – one CIO told me that his organization spends a lot of time training his IT team to think in terms of how they can further their organization’s business objectives.

This emphasis on the importance of being able to speak the language of business is understandable. However, I wonder about the flip side. If technology can be taught to MBAs, is business acumen somehow inherently out-of-reach for technologists? Of course that can’t be universally true. But the conventional wisdom seems to be that it is more difficult to get technologists to think like the business side. You can teach some of the business-speak, but ultimately, technologists fall back into the jargon where they are most comfortable.

So if you’re replacing the technologists with those hybrid business types, isn’t it logical to expect an IT backlash? I mean someone has to get down and dirty with the technology to make it all work. At some point more than a cursory knowledge is required, and no amount of business savvy can replace that.

If not outright replaced, what of the resentments of having business acumen prized over technology abilities? Perhaps it plays out that the technologists are there, but they are led by those trained in business. In my experience, technologists – the same as any group of specialized professionals – are resentful when their direct managers have little knowledge of the field in which they work.

Are we at an impasse? Is IT motivated to adapt to the business or die? Or, is this just a trend of the moment, and yet another point as to why IT and Business will remain separate and distinct – destined to continue a symbiotic, yet slightly dysfunctional relationship.

I’m keenly interested to hear the voice of technologists here. Is this a trend you recognize in your day-to-day world or is this a non-issue? Is the point about IT being out of touch with business overstated? What say you?