Last week I completed a mini-series of 9 episodes looking at various aspects of recruitment. As I went through the series I decided I wanted to give you a bonus episode on recruitment. I wanted to tell you about the best hire you can make.
Or listen at:
Published: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 16:04:54 GMT
Transcript
If you own or run a business, the single best hire you can make for your organisation is to appoint a skilled and experience IT leader to the top table.
I've talked repeatedly about how every business today is a technology business.
Without an ability to utilise and exploit technology then your business will be severely disadvantaged.
It doesn't matter if your business is hundreds of years old with a pedigree of leading the market or a start-up, without that technological capability then you will lose market share to competitors that can.
In the same way that the industrial revolution was a major disruptor, the technology revolution is doing the same thing - but on a much grander scale.
Traditionally we have had IT report into the top table via finance - maybe the Chief Financial Officer or the Finance Director. Sometimes it is via operators - the Chief Operating Officer or Operations Director.
In either case, we are expecting someone, who's primary discipline is not IT, to represent it.
For the Chief Financial Officer this has unfortunately often found IT being looked at as a cost - as an overhead.
For the Chief Operating Officer this has often found IT being looked at as a stability issue.
Very rarely is IT being seen as a enabler and a path for organisation change.
So does having a Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technical Officer (CTO) suddenly transform the business?
Of course it won't overnight.
But so much of an organisations success comes from the tone set by the top table.
If the top table is not confident or open to technological driven change - then neither will be the organisation.
I've quoted Edward Deming previously
"the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance."
That system is based on the culture, attitudes and goals passed down from the top table.
No matter how hard individuals within that system work, they will only ever be able to affect 5-10% of the overall performance output of the system as a whole.
So much of this podcast series is aimed at educating you - the business owner and operator - on thinking about software development (and by extension IT) with a different mindset to the traditional project management approach.
While I obviously hope that this series is providing you with value, I'm still very aware that the knowledge I can give you in a short weekly podcast is still going to take time to move the organisational needle.
Having a "me" embedded at the highest level of your organisation can obviously move that needle a lot quicker.
Having someone that not only understands modern technology practices but can also champion the value that digital change can make to an organisation.
Having someone to open eyes and doors to the new and exciting possibilities that the technical revolution brings.
Modern business is less about moving physical items - atoms.
It is more about moving data.
And that focus will only continue to grow over the coming years.
There is a growing consensus that the CEOs of the future will come from technical disciples as much as they current do from Sales, Marketing and Finance.
If anything, I think that can be expected to grow overtime.
In this podcast, I've recommended creating a technical position at the top table.
I recommend this as the best hire an organisation could possibly make.
More and more business need to be technology driven ... Need to be technology lead
While it is obviously right and proper for your entire top table to have technological literacy, I believe it is too fundamental capability of any business for it not to have focused representation.