IT staff are being denied the most senior company jobs by top
management - who fail to give them the necessary training and
prefer to view them as subordinate advisers rather than fellow
directors, writes John Kavanagh.
This emerges from research by telecoms operator Energis, which
also says IT people must do more to push their case for a seat on
the board.
The good news is that IT staff are no longer seen as backroom
specialists, according to the survey of 200 executives.
Their image has changed partly because of their handling of the
year 2000 issue and the rise of e-commerce, e-business and mobile
technology.
"Managers we spoke to broadly agree that senior management and
board directors now take IT professionals' opinions much more
seriously than a few years ago," says Energis director David
Shaw.
"However, despite IT managers' increasing influence, their
contributions are much less valued by senior business people than
those of colleagues in other disciplines."
Shaw points to the fact that directors ranked IT third behind
finance and marketing, on a par with personnel and ahead of
production, in terms of importance.
In addition, only a fifth of companies had an IT professional on
the board - and only 7% predicted that IT would have a seat at
board level within two years.
On top of that, figures from Cranfield University, which
contributed to the research, show that only 4% of people on MBA
courses funded by employers are from IT, compared with 18% from
marketing and 18% from finance.
"Several IT professionals said senior managers did not even
expect IT managers to understand or show interest in broader
business issues, and they found this insulting and
frustrating."
He continues, "These findings are very puzzling. Telecoms and IT
skills are enabling the e-economy and becoming more important for
businesses by the day, yet many companies fail to acknowledge the
power and influence of these disciplines in the form of future
board-level positions."
Chris Edwards, professor of information systems at Cranfield
University, has an explanation. "IT managers are often cultivated
as a specialist source of information to the board, and directors
are happy to keep things this way."
One view exposed during the research was that many board
directors might be worried about their own lack of knowledge and
therefore prefer to keep technical people at arms' length.
"Feedback from IT professionals suggests immense frustration at
how senior management fail to acknowledge the critical contribution
that IT management can make to the business," Shaw says.
A common complaint during the survey was a lack of appreciation
of how much time, money and staff was needed for IT projects.
IT people also reported that senior management often or
sometimes took wrong decisions because of a lack of technical
knowledge.