They get promoted for the class of problem they can solve

Original post on June 8, 2011

I recently ran across two separate quotes from high-powered IS executives that I wanted to remember.

The first is from a Senior VP in IS:

The problems you want your technical leaders to solve are too big for one person or one team.

These leaders must see the big picture, be quick studies, organize teams, break up finger-pointing,

use their broad and deep technical experience to guide investigations, and balance immediate

pressure to get systems back up at any cost while discovering and fixing the problems.

My role as senior VP over the application group was to provide political cover, “managing up”

and making any decisions the technical team didn’t think it could make.

My rule is, people don’t get promoted for what they know;

they get promoted for the class of problem they can solve.

The second is from a profile of a CIO:

The people I worked with at McKinsey during 1990-’94. They helped me transition from a techie

to being more well rounded. After one of my first meetings with a group of key client executives,

a McKinsey partner asked me what I thought. I outlined what I thought the best technical solution was.

He asked how I knew that was the right answer. The best I could come up with was,

it was intuition from my years of previous experience with similar situations.

He explained that without thoroughly understanding the client’s business and analyzing the data

around the various options, intuition could easily lead to the wrong answer.