SIDEBAR: CEO Types
What category best represents the CEO at your company?
The Hypocrite, who espouses strategic importance of IT but negates belief through personal action.
The Believer, who believes IT enables strategic advantage and demonstrates belief through action.
The Waverer, who reluctantly accepts strategic importance of IT.
The Monarch, who accepts IT is important, appoints the best CIO and steps back.
The Agnostic, who concedes IT is important but needs repeated convincing.
The Zealot, who is convinced IT is important and equally believes he is an IT expert.
The Atheist, who is convinced IT is of little value and publicly espouses this belief.
Source: The creeds were originally defined in a Sloan Management Review article.
SIDEBAR: Helping Them Get It
People who have worked with technically-challenged bosses have come up with specific educational strategies that help. A few follow:
A little empathy goes a long way. Think of how you feel when you take your car in with a mysterious grinding noise. You're in over your head. You don't understand the systems, the complexity or the diagnosis. You have no basis for evaluating anything. That's how your boss feels every day.
Recognize that ego is involved. Help him save face. Don't humiliate him for what he doesn't know.
Don't talk techie. He either won't get it or will try to pretend he does.
Talk business. If he doesn't understand the impact of computers being down, talk about the implications in lost revenue and customer complaints that will result if automated invoices don't go out. If you want new development tools, talk about benefits in productivity, dollar and time savings, and revenue generation.
Communicate in his preferred style. If he likes things in writing, for example, write.
Take him to seminars, conferences and site visits to organizations that use IS in creative ways. Then spend time exploring what you heard and how it might apply to your organization. You'll build a relationship as you educate him.
Arrange staff presentations for the boss and make sure the staff is talking in lay terms. You'll be educating the boss, training your staff to talk with business clients and helping them know and trust each other.
Bring in the experts. Take him to management consultant seminars, and back up your arguments with articles and consulting reports. It helps for him to know it isn't just your opinion.
Help him communicate with his bosses. Give him what he needs to succeed with his superiors.
Establish trust. Resist the temptation to put one over on him. Build up his confidence that you know what you're doing - that if you say so, it's a fact.
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.