The Urgently Emerging Necessity of Strategically Technocratic Leadership

In many organizations today, Information Technology is still relegated to being simply a cost center and service provider driven by the demands and the directions of the business leadership teams it serves. The old joke that “CTO” doesn’t so much mean “Chief Technical Officer” as “Can’t Take Over” plays right into the common stereotypes and misconceptions that technologists, developers, architects, and IT executives don’t have the business acumen, vision, strategic insight, leadership characteristics, or organizational influence – let alone the basic people skills – to be a meaningful voice at the table when it comes to running a successful business. Do you think this approach and viewpoint has anything to do with the fact that over half of all IT projects reportedly fail?

Let's consider a famous example – Do you remember the healthcare.gov failure to launch and project reset?  When you read that news did you believe that it was the result of an IT executive with full technical grasp of the problem at hand and the solution required sitting down and designing and delivering that project following best practices and strategic technical insight? Or, did you, like most of us, conclude that it was far more likely that the obstacles that stood in the way of successful delivery came from the stakeholders, the business leaders, the politicians, the institutional players, and the organizationally savvy players in the room who used their influence and control to elicit such a notorious setback?  So, ask yourself, who pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat for healthcare.gov? Was it the political and institutional leadership? Or was it the choice to finally accept leadership from the folks who could actually deliver a solution – from the technologists and the IT leadership who understood the vision and the need and had the expertise to deliver on the goal once they were freed from the constraints of the organization’s structural political desires?

We are living in a technocratic age – an age where objectively high-quality solutions win and where no one can hide from the competitive fact of the technological meritocracy that delivers success to the informed, innovative, and well-aligned – and failure to those who are more interested in their own opinions and beliefs than in the cold, hard reality of performance and delivery.

We are living in an age where the level of sophistication required of decision makers is at an all time high and only increasing (rapidly). Where investments are succeeding or failing based on the ability of companies and leaders to accurately assess the fundamental machines, systems, and processes that are designed to support them.

We are living in an age where more is required than a single skill set or knowledge base to make the highest quality decisions.

Take cryptocurrencies as a current example. Cryptocurrency is not just a technology with algorithmic risks and potentially intractable technical obstacles standing in its way on both scalability and security fronts. Cryptocurrency is not just a legal structure and regulatory concern with financial risk and operational challenges. Cryptocurrency is not just an asset and a means of exchange with valuation risk and bottom line impact. Cryptocurrency is a complex fabric of concerns woven together so tightly that even the smartest minds are kept guessing at the ultimate state of the technology, the ultimate approach by the law, the ultimate value of the asset, and the ultimate definition of the product. So, the question is, who do you want to make the choice about cryptocurrency for your business?

It used to be enough to go to business school and study basic principles of economics and markets, management and culture, leadership and finance, etc. So long as you had basic common sense, relatively sound judgment, and a couple of decent analysts with a bit of good luck you could guide your business to success. However, as the environment is continuing to accelerate into everything from artificial intelligence and distributed, networked, autonomous, and increasingly diverse devices, systems, products, and platforms – understanding even the basic context of your decisions, let alone reducing risk and improving the quality of outcomes for your company requires more and more strategically technocratic vision and leadership.

Some see what is happening now as the death of IT.  As systems move into the cloud and become smarter, more autonomous, user friendly, and robust the mundane roles of the classic in-house IT department are starting to disappear. But, what people seem to be missing as we go through this transition is that the smart companies, the next generation of successful companies, the leadership who will rise to the top in the emerging technocratic economy are the ones who see that now is the time to join the war for broad-reaching, deeply-founded technology talent. Now is the time to find and retain the strategically technocratic voices that will improve your likelihood of winning in an increasingly technocratic marketplace.

Far from witnessing the death of IT, we are witnessing the most rapid expansion of IT in the history of the world.  It’s not that in-house IT and the technologists who support it are simply going away. On the contrary, technology is expanding into every department and the need for solid technical understanding and leadership is expanding right along with it.  As the use of the next generation of technology accelerates, every leader must either become a technocratic leader, or be left behind by those who are. Whether you are in marketing or sales, operations or customer care, general management or executive leadership – every aspect of every business is deeply impacted, enabled, and empowered by technology.  And so, choosing to make decisions uninformed and out of alignment with the objective fact of the technologies involved both within your company and by your competition is clearly a mistake that can impact the future of your company – its employees, its customers, and its shareholders – for the worse.

So, rather than choosing the "wish and a prayer" strategy of blindly investing in catch phrases like blockchain, AI, and IoT or following the crowd to buy the next “shiny object” SaaS/IaaS/PaaS platform and hoping for the best by expanding your technology spend without a real understanding of fit, alignment, or capability – maybe it’s time to consider who it is you are entrusting with your most crucial decisions. Maybe it’s time to consider how you are preparing your leaders for the technocratic marketplace of today and the rapidly changing landscape of tomorrow. 

Is your company recruiting, training, coaching, and retaining the best strategically technocratic leaders you can find across every discipline in your business to help you navigate the waters of this rapidly accelerating technocratic age?

It’s certainly the opinion of this writer that you should be.