Is it OK for IT managers to let skills lapse?

Here is an interesting question: why is it in IT we allow our managers to let their specialist technology skills lapse?

That doesn't happen in other disciplines as much. In marketing, you can still talk marketing even if you're running a whole division. Otherwise, you can't run marketing.

If you're an economist, even if you are the Chief Economist in a bank, you're still an economist. Otherwise, you don't know enough to approve the forecasts on which the whole business is based.

And if you're a medical doctor, you keep up to date with the latest advances, particularly if you have to teach. Otherwise you lose your right to practice altogether.

Not so in IT, where we do something quite different.

You learn your skills, probably getting more and more technical as your skill set specialises. To get ahead, you have to be the best person in some particular discipline. World best technologists are treated almost as if they're rock stars, commanding big audiences whenever they can be convinced to appear in public. Getting ahead in IT is a race to specialism, as it is in any other industry.

But then we get to that inflection point where we ask people in IT to become managers. That's when things change. What happens then is you have a race to be as generalised as possible. The more generalised you get, and the larger the number of non-technical functions you get hold of, the more successful you are. Scope of control is the measure of success for an aspiring IT Manager.

Suddenly, its OK to lose your knowledge of the current state of the art. It's OK to have to rely on less experienced people to make critical decisions because you're no longer current enough to make them yourself. It is almost a badge of honour, in fact: managers who are too technical aren't seen to be effective, because they haven't risen above their roots.

Can you imagine all that being OK if you were a senior medico?

So here's the question I'm posing today: should we allow managers to lack currency in a discipline that touches almost all others in some way?

I know the standard argument: the pace of change is such that its impossible to keep up to date in various technologies and still do the day job. 

There's another standard argument as well: you don't need technical knowledge to effectively manage IT staff.

But I'd like to make an observation: many of the critical decisions which relate to major IT estates in large organisations both private and public are made behind closed doors by managers, who probably don't have access to their staff at the precise moment they are called on to decide something. Nothing unusual about that: quite often critical decisions can't be shared widely for lots of sensible reasons.

But this means managers either have enough residual knowledge to guess at the correct answer, or they guess at the answer regardless of correctness.

So, is it OK for this to happen? I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Comments

[Mike Burke]

Not sure I'm in agreement with your comparison to other disciplines/industries.

Sure, I expect a senior medico to be across the latest and greatest 'medico' stuff - they are a senior technical specialist at the end of the day.

But what about someone who manages a ward in a hospital that includes doctors (or something). Do you expect the same level of technical depth from that person? I don't.

To your final question, it's hard for me to imagine any field of business whereby people at the top make a decision based on a full and complete view and understanding of all the facts and with everyone present in the room to answer all questions definitively.

Generally you'd see a set of alternatives bubble upwards, provided by people with a greater understanding of the detail.

Do I expect these people to make a decision as to whether the new corporate network should be based on ethernet or token ring? Nope.

Do I expect them to make a decision on whether we should build a new network at all? Yep. I fail to see how understanding the ins-and-outs of IP tunneling or how to construct a TCP sync flood attack would help them make such a decision.

[Steph Gray]

Think you may be slightly over-stating the level of specialist, current knowledge retained by senior managers in other disciplines, but I can't be sure.

What's perhaps shocking about technology management is that subject specialist ignorance can be badge of honour at times, unlike other fields. So people get appointed or moved into roles managing IT programmes with no background not only in the latest technology trends, but also in the fundamentals of technology management or strategy - and that's OK, because 'IT is just another business function, and as a strategist, you shouldn't get bogged down in the details'. I don't think that happens to the same extent in finance, marketing or medicine.

[Thomas Barker]

You can be mediocre manager of anything without knowing it well - your staff have their own targets to hit and will quickly encase you like a piece of grit in an oyster.

However, an understanding of IT will stop you from doing things like:
1) Buying Ultraseek DNS services (or Akamai's) at their list price.
2) Asking your staff to build a credit card service over email.
3) Thinking that SSL makes your website secure.
4) Mandating RDF databases for all corporate data.
5) Purchasing 50+ servers when 2 would actually do (you ran out of bandwidth and didn't realise it)

Sure, if you have great people working for you and trust them, that'll stop you from making any mistake. But isn't your job to make their lives easier, not the other way around?

[Mark Toomey]

James, I subscribed to your blog some time ago because you made a very sensible comment. Since then, I have had cause to wonder whether that was a flash in the pan.

Now I read this absolute twaddle and conclude that I must stay attached to your blog to see just what bizzare proposition you can come up with next!

Your analogy with doctors fails at the first post. Would you allow your general practitioner to perform delicate heart surgery? Not even in the best hospital money can buy - because the GP is not trained for that. Would you ask a gynogologist to treat your hearing loss? Nope - wrong end of the body! But who would refer you to the ear specialist, or the heart specialist, or the oncologist? Yep - the GP. In medicine, as in IT, there are generalists and there are specialists. And on top of those layers are the medical managers - the ones who have come from the field and understand its intricacies, but whose talents are better directed to managing the service providers than they are to dealing directly with the patients.

I do think that IT heads should have a good general knowledge fo what they are managing. But that doesn't require them to maintain deep technical skills.

Moreover, and more fundamentally, the people who decide how the business runs need to understand what purpose IT serves, and how they can use it to improve the business. That doesn't require any deep IT technical skill at all. It does require a whole lot of other skill that is rarely found in IT people, especially those who have an ongoing, unrequited need to stay in touch with the deep technical disciplines.

[James Gardner]

Mark,

This was a deliberately provocative post, and I see you have been provoked. Thank you for staying engaged, even if it is to ensure that you have the chance to point out future instances of "twaddle".

[Mike Giles]

Hi James,

I am right on board with you on this!

I think one of the biggest reasons IT projects go south is because strong software developers have followed the standard progression path into management and let their skills go thinking that they are management now and don't need to get their hands dirty.

I constantly council all my team that they need to keep their core technology skills strong and up to date.

How else can they tell when a quote or estimate is way out of kilter, or a project decision made by a junior (but more specialised) developer is making the right decision.

When I was working on campus at Microsoft as a vendor, I used to be constantly surprised at just how in-touch and technical most of their senior managers were.

Really valuable players are those who can stay technically strong and grow their management skills as well.

[Neil Robinson]

James, the clue is in the job title. Manager or Director. I feel a good manager makes sure he has the best specialists working for him, as Mark implies. Its about "corporate intelligence".

You job is not to understand the intricacies of the technology, it is to understand the value that it will bring to the business. Aren't you now an interpreter?

A good manager should create, manage and direct a knowledge channel. He should ensure good, relevant technical advice filters up to him, he should understand it, extract the value from it and communicate that to the business in a way they understand.

He must also be able to convey to his team the needs of the business to ensure the right information comes back to him to maintain the value proposition.

All he needs to differentiate and understand is the value from the bullshit.

Think of a good prime minister... isn't it all its all about hierarchies and pyramids?

Just make sure your team isn't managing you by feeding you stuff that suits them more than your customers. But that's probably another topic!

[Stephen Law]

The technical skills of the IT Manager are just one ingredient in a complex recipe. Too much technology knowledge combined with poor management skills (e.g. an inability to delegate) can be a bad thing in that the synergies and strengths of the team can become under-utilised and/or result in a lack of motivation.

A lack of technology awareness by a manager can also introduce problems of frustration or a perception of incompetence within a team. The skills and management style of the manager in terms of planning, organising, delegating, staffing, directing, coaching and leading are also highly relevant, as is the blend and mix of skills and personalities that make up his/her team. Situations can/do arise where the manager is more technically skilled than the team members and this is where the manager needs to adopt the role of coach and mentor?

I do think IT Managers have a basic duty to at least have an up to date awareness of technologies involved.

[Thomas Barker]

A: Soon trains will be wheel-less and integrated to the track!

B: What?

A: Engines are the new wheels.

B: No, you need an engine and wheels to push against the track.

A: New carriages can power trains.

B: That makes them engines.

A: Anyway, in the long term the rails will become the engine and the wheel is a squeaky relic of history.

B: I think you mean a maglev. Which is really a very different system to...

A: Precisely.

A: Would it make any difference to the traveller from a business perspective?

B: Well, no...

A: See.

B: Arrrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !

From http://thomasbarker.com/10/01/why-it-people-get-so-frustrated

[Amitabh Apte]

James,

I think you are here also pointing to the gap in the marketplace for senior IT professionals who fail to maintain the fine balance between technology benefits and it's commercial impact.

How many times have you come across architects making some very relevant technical proposals but completely missing the business value aspects? Or how often have you seen business consultants making business recommendations which are based on absolute technology fluff. Answer I suspect is often. And this is where a few leaders make a difference, carve out a niche for themselves and connect technology possibilities with commercial realities.

Yes you are right; we are seeing more and more IT managers taking pride in saying that they focus on business and taking eye off the implementation details. But then these are the folks who are trying to fill the business - IT gap blindly. These people read articles in magazines about how IT should be business focussed and misinterpret to an extent where they get away from their core skills and end up in a spot where they neither belong to business nor make meaningful contributions to IT departments.

But this is Ok, the real technology leaders will always shine through. These will be the next generation of CIOs, CTOs, CXOs and CEOs who will be close to technology. Who will understand the service delivery issues of thin client and thick client models but will equally understand that new sources of revenue will be unlocked through new channels to market. These will be the people who will be able to make effective business cases for tech refresh based on firm possibilities of cost reduction and revenue enhancement. And most importantly these will be the people who will not be shy to state that I was a programmer once! And these set of people are already here and leading the charge through the offices of CIO, CTO and CXO. The pretenders will fall by wayside.

[David Chan]

James,

You have provoked a good response and I understand where you are coming from. My view is that IT Leaders must have a resonance for the technology and should be in a position to judge the quality of the technical proposals either through direct knowledge of the domain or through being able to assess the competencies of the individuals preferring the advice.

This means more than jumping on the latest band-wagon or managing through advice (whether from SIs, Vendors Gartner or Forrester etc. As to whether the Information Leader (this is the term we used at the Centre for Information Leadership for the CIO/CTO leadership positions) has to have a technical background, I believe that is entirely situational dependant on the business of the enterprise and the capabilities of his/her team.

We believe that the future state information leader has to be a modern Renaissance Man who is comfortable with Technology, Business and Influencing. That is why the curriculum for our Masters of Information Leadership programme is designed around enabling aspiring Information Leaders to gain insights from many perspectives.

So, the Information Leader will have a main skills area as a background, programming, architecture, business analysis, project management, service management etc but must draw upon a wider range of perspectives in fulfilling the role.

[Mike Broomhead]

The differentiation of specialism that some have highlighted is very relevant.

I've been victim of managers or 'leaders' who simply cannot keep up with the debate being had; not that they should be Subject Matter Experts but they need to know the questions to ask, the criteria to apply, an 'outside-in' objective view. I've found my Architectural Thinking training helps that enormously.

Managers manage better with some domain experience which should be kept up-to-date as per your assertion. But they should not try to be subject matter experts and they should value SMEs in their team or externally.

The balance is best summarised as the difference between a SME/specialist, and an architect; both need to be up-to-date.