I’ve found this to be true much more often than one might think.
The suits are cheap or dumb or it’s their fault they can’t speak tech. But often there’s just a lack of communication skills.
The suits are cheap or dumb or it’s their fault they can’t speak tech. But often there’s just a lack of communication skills.
Business execs want everything broken down in "how much will this make me" and "how much will this cost me". The problem IT faces is that sort of impact isn't easy (or is impossible) to articulate. We can easily speak to how much the fix will cost, but not to how much it will save or bring in.
This is why orgs are terrible at security. How much will fixing the log4j issue save? Who knows, maybe nothing, maybe the entire business.
The budgetary control management system that companies like this use isn't primarily designed to limit spending to the minimum necessary. Its primary purpose is to prevent any political power being built away from the management office, by constraining access to the critical resource.
I mean this literally and historically. Budgets being used for management control dates from when the CEO of General Motors couldn't control the sprawling divisions they'd bought, so he (well, his CFO) brought in budgetary controls invented by McKinsey (the man, not the company) so they couldn't move without his say-so. And of course because it worked for GM, it must be good for everyone.
Maybe it is hard to communicate with people who lack a fundamental understanding of the critical tools they use.
If you don't understand how to write software it's like not understanding how to run a newsroom for a newspaper - you simply won't make the right decision often enough no matter how clever you are
It may seem like a ridiculous idea for a floral delivery service. But if you know your people enough to trust them or not trust them, you don't have to be an expert in everything to make the right decisions.
Which brings us a full circle to the nerds hating the suits because they want to quantify the unquantifiable.
OR, you could just go with what the experts say and be tagged a pushover.
If we think of management as "coach / therapist" (ie the eight rules of google management" then yeah, the goal of management is to take a team of high performers and help them not to implode. But I don't see that as "management"
I think there are better definitions
And posts like this where you act so smug and callous do nothing to change this.