Post Technical Stress Disorder: Don’t be the CIO unable to run IT

Every day I see two clear goals: lead the team of IT professionals responsible for technology, process and collaboration in a manner that maximizes the contribution towards corporate objectives and cooperate with other senior executives to influence and understand the objectives.

Working with other senior executives as a partner, translator and leader has been the focus of my post technical endeavors. Post technical simply being the time in my career where checking source out of team foundation server and rolling up my sleeves to make some ASP.net changes is no longer part of my daily routine. It is very rare to find a Chief Information Officer or SVP of some critical IT service participating in daily stand-ups, backlog grooming sessions or taking coding assignments with their team in a sprint to meet the objectives of a user story. As a matter of fact, most of the executives we work for or with would probably frown on this type of endeavor as a distraction from your primary responsibilities and concerns.  I agree with them. A CIO has a much broader set of opportunities and objectives than to be the super-coder of the team or the only person who knows how to update the firmware on that one router you should have replaced 5 years ago.

However, the paradox we face is intriguing. A post technical focus is critical to many CIO’s ongoing success; the teams we manage respond better to our leadership when the post technical mindset is skewed by as much detail on how IT works and how the people in IT perform their job as possible.

Fortunately, the people you are managing and leading every day probably have low expectations. Let’s be honest with each other – how many network admins and developers expect you to have relevant technical skills at this point in your career?

So, you are starting to wonder, if my peers don’t expect me to have retained deeply  technical skills, my team doesn’t expect me to have retained deeply technical skills and my primary objective as CIO probably doesn’t depend on deeply technical skills – why do I care? You care because as the senior IT executive in your business you want to be able to manage and interface with your domain. You care because at some level you want to validate the information you are given about projects, technology choices and procedures. You care because you want to be connected to every person put in your care.

If none of those reasons work I will give you one more that should matter to every single person in IT – self preservation.

The next generation of CIOs, CTOs and senior IT leaders are going to retain significantly more technical expertise deeper into their career than the current crop of senior IT executives. These up and coming leaders have grown up with more complicated technology, process and capability than the people currently running the show. They are and will be well versed in agile practices, collaborative styles and tools, social computing and exposure to scripting and source code models as a hobby not a profession.

Many of today’s IT leaders are feeling the stress and pain of not being able to comprehend the practices and technologies of their team. When I see this start to set in I always envision a condition I call “Post Technology Stress Disorder”. A condition where you start to feel disconnected and unable to deeply manage your area of responsibilities due to the natural and relevant focus of your career versus the area you lead. You are managing with a post technical emphasis while the teams are pushing further and further into technologies and practices you have no direct experience applying. Eventually this disconnect puts you into a situation where your ability to directly manage the IT function starts to attrite and you are only able to manage the people who manage IT.

You might find this to be a natural part of a progressive senior IT career, but I would challenge that thinking and ask you to instead see the counterpoint – what could be better for an organization than a CIO able to perform well as a post technical leader and an inspirational technologist for the IT enterprise?

So, assuming you have an interest in maintaining or refreshing your technology management skills you will find the remedy for Post Technical Stress Disorder is simple. Don’t be afraid to start at the beginning. Learn the basics of mark up languages, scripting environments and modern operating systems. Spend time one on one with your team mates. Ask them to show you what they do and how. Go to meetings where technical decisions get made. Learn. You don’t have to be and shouldn’t be the expert, but you will be a better CIO and a better executive if you know how your team members perform their jobs.