Solving the skills conundrum – part 1

When Bill Weeks took over as CIO of the US asset-recovery company, SquareTwo Financial, he saw 70 per cent of his development team out the door. Most left of their own accord; he fired the rest.

The reason he made such an extreme move was that his staff, he decided, weren’t business-oriented enough. Talking with CIO Australia, Weeks said he wanted to build a results-focused technology team, but many of the staff refused to engage with the business.

“The previous CIO had told IT staff, ‘Business people are busy doing business things, and if I catch you talking to them, I’ll fire you’. That’s the exact opposite of what I believe.”

Read Solving the skills conundrum – part 2.

This forced mass departure may seem a tad excessive, and many commentators CIO Australia spoke with certainly felt so. But Weeks was adamant. When he took over in 2010, the company was going through a growth spurt, he says, but IT was lagging behind.

It took time for IT employees to get comfortable with business discussions, he says. “It’s difficult for a developer to stand up and say, ‘I’m going to show you what my product does and do it in a way that a business person can understand it’. Not, ‘Hey, I wrote this code this way and here are my SQL statements’, but, ‘Here’s the business value to why I designed this the way I did’.”

Mass sackings or not, that’s an issue faced by many CIOs, their c-level peers and IT staff themselves. But do IT people have what it takes to be business as well as technology-oriented? And can we even find enough talented people to fill the gaps?

Certainly business is seen as an increasingly vital part of the makeup of IT, at least at the higher levels. Charlie Sukkar, CIO of CSR, says a big part of giving IT folks a sense of business orientation is ingrained in its culture.

“I strongly believe culture drives behaviour, which in turn drives outcomes,” he says. “We always talk about being a partner to the business.

“To have a successful and meaningful relationship, you really need to understand the priorities and needs of your partner and put that at the centre of everything you do. This is at the heart of what we do as an IT organisation.”

Business culture

A business-oriented culture is key in finding and putting the best people forward, but it is often easier said than done. The problem Weeks faced is not restricted to his specific situation. Nor does the blame lie necessarily with the people. Some managers are their own worst enemy in building the right environment.

Rob Hillard, managing partner of the technology agenda for Deloitte, cites one company where IT management literally put locks on the department door to keep users out. Internal and external customers must go through channels, was the philosophy. The company didn’t want its IT people to be exposed to business and financial issues. The opposite, in other words, of what is being required.

Teri Takai, CIO of the US Department of Defense, claims it’s hard for tech people – even middle and senior managers – to think the way the business thinks. They tend to explain things from their own perspective, which can have a major impact on their future.

Tony Rosanno, senior client partner for Pan-Asia technology with executive placement company, Korn-Ferry, says that while technical proficiency is important in areas like apps development, you do need to identify those within the organisation who have the business and leadership nous that will determine success.

“People without business skills will struggle to find employment in the future. If they’re not talking value, the customer and so on, their professional future is uncertain,” he claims.

Therefore this is, or should be, the aim of most CIOs and business management generally. But aims can also be intentions, and intentions are often influenced by circumstance. Those circumstances might not be conducive to business orientation.

“Mindset is as important as skills,” says Hillard. “Can everyone be pushed into business orientation? Yes. That is, everyone who wants to.”

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Ian Bertram, managing vice-president and global manager of analytics and business intelligence at Gartner, describes a recent visit to a university to give the post-graduate students a taste of what life in the profession is like.

“I was asked about the technical skills, and I told them the profession is not just looking for tech skills, but a business approach as well. Softer skills like selling and communicating, for example,” he explains. “They need to understand the impact and value of tech, but not purely the tech itself.”

Bertram adds that at Gartner conventions, a typical breakdown of the audience indicates 40 per cent see themselves as having technical skills, 40 per cent business skills, and only 30 per cent claim both.

This is despite the view that the ‘hybrid’ IT person is the ideal professional. “You can’t stand on just one set of skills,” Bartram says.

Staff and future leaders may literally need to be in a “two-in-a-box” position – two people in the one role, separately covering business and technology, sharing responsibility and offering mutual education. As long as they get along, they can both benefit by developing broader skills than their original offering.

Whether in one box or more, getting them up into leadership positions is the next step.

John Whiting, head of the technology group at Korn-Ferry, says succession planning is the number one topic in his talks with CIOs. “You need to look at how ready your people are,” he says, which may mean giving them a chance to show they have what it takes ... or not.

“Employ from within, as they understand the business better. They need to relate to the business and to vendors. They need win/win skills rather than the adversarial and confrontational approach.”

But be warned, not everyone has what it takes. Whiting says this can be quantified. “Only 29 per cent of high performers in a particular role are also high potential individuals.” However, he adds 93 per cent of high potential people are also high performers.

In other words, you have to choose your people carefully, as most of them won’t have what it takes to get to the top despite excellent work. “When you do find someone, they will need that good performance to even be considered,” Whiting says.

Are the people out there?

Finding the best people for the job is hard enough. But finding any people for the job may be the bigger problem.

The recently released Election Platform Statement from the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) points out that while the number of jobs in ICT have grown by almost 100 per cent over the last 15 years, the number of people applying for tertiary studies in IT has declined by 55 per cent. Since 2004, there has been a growing gap between the number of jobs and the number of people studying ICT.

Westpac Banking Group CIO, Clive Whincup, recently claimed the bank looks offshore for IT labour because there “simply aren’t enough people” in Australia with the right skills for certain roles. The organisation is in the midst of a five-year, $2 billion Strategic Investment Program (SIP) to upgrade its core IT systems and has outsourced 119 software development and system maintenance jobs in a move that drew fire from the Finance Sector Union.

Whincup argues Westpac had “no option but to tap into large resource pools which are not geographically local” for the transformation program, although not all people who do coding and testing will be provided by outsourced providers.

“We have to do this [offshore] because we have a shortage of skills. The paradox is that because we are doing it and because the media and some elements of society are fixed with the fact that it’s happening for cost reasons, it’s actually becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he says.

“People are forming the view that all of the [IT] jobs are going offshore, so there are no jobs in Australia, therefore I am not going to put my son or daughter in a technology-related degree course. That’s the logic we have to cut off – there’s a shortage of skills, therefore we are internationally focused. Jobs are not going offshore, activities are going offshore because there is not enough supply within the local market for those activities to be undertaken locally.”

Whincup calls on the IT industry to make a concerted effort to change perceptions about IT careers, as well as work more closely with educational institutions, to help address the looming IT skills gap in Australia.

Deloitte’s Rob Hillard agrees part of the problem comes back to culture and people’s impressions of the ICT profession, for better or worse. He also suggests universities might not be the best at marketing themselves.

In addition, many potential IT people were given a negative impression of the industry by the dot.com boom and bust. If the revolving door of jobs in-and-out of the industry depends on left-field ideas of entrepreneurs, or the changeable market attitude of investors, then a job in ICT may look an uncertain and risky option.

This shortfall in applicants could mean CIOs in smaller organisations or less ‘sexy’ industries have trouble finding the best people for the job, or any people for the job, and settle for, frankly, people who have absolutely no inclination or aptitude to be business-facing.

Read Solving the skills conundrum – part 2.