All too often, technology companies fail to find the right balance within their business executives. When a business exec is too technical, she may not have the aggressiveness or “street smarts” to help a young company succeed. If a business exec isn’t technical enough, he might swim out of his depth and make wrong decisions about key technology or product hires.
You may have heard it referred to (unkindly) as the Mechanic Dilemma: Business execs, like car owners, rarely have the knowledge to understand or question what their “mechanic” (tech team) tells them. The word “hostage” is also used, as in “Our management is being held hostage by our tech team!” Whatever the words used to describe it, there are few things more harmful to a company’s prospects than a lack of trust between the business leaders and product and engineering leaders.
The truth is, business execs don’t need to be very technical — they just need to have a strong understanding of, and respect for, the ethos of their technical leads and show the hallmark qualities of good leadership: ethics, determination, discipline and humility. By examining the top five reasons business execs fail to work effectively with technical execs, it’s possible to anticipate and avoid some common problems.
5. Failure to Focus
Young technology companies can be “organized chaos,” with rapidly changing business models and plans. Still, business execs need to demonstrate that their approach makes sense — even if it involves a period of experimentation, so they can “fail fast” until they hit on the right strategy. There’s no surer way to alienate product and engineering teams than to whipsaw them from project to project with an ill-conceived “Idea of the Day” approach.
4. Failure to Show Respect
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. If you’re a tourist overseas, you shouldn’t assume that everyone speaks English. That’s just plain rude. Natives of your host country will appreciate any attempt to speak their language, however feeble it might be; it’s a sign of respect and will go a long way to making sure the waiters don’t spit in your food. Likewise, even if business execs don’t understand the “language” of their technical counterparts, they need to do their homework and try to gain a basic awareness of the job at hand. It shows respect and breeds confidence. Business execs also often fail to appreciate what inspires and motivates technical and product folks, who sometimes are creative types more interested in building cool, innovative and useful stuff than making a busload of cash.
3. Failure to Delegate to an Ally
Micromanaging is bad enough when the micromanager is in his or her comfort zone. But it’s really intolerable when a non-technical business exec tries to micromanage the intricacies of product development and release cycles. Most successful companies have a technical-minded product or operations person who is also fluent in business matters. The engineers all know and like her and are happy to follow her lead. A pure business exec would do well to make this person an ally and delegate to her.
2. Failure to Build Consensus
Disliking the consequences of a decision, including the work that flows from it, is much different than disagreeing with the decision itself. Business execs should make every attempt to build consensus for the decisions they make, so that the long hours of work that flow from them do not cause resentment. The product and technical teams may dislike the fallout from those decisions, but if they understand and agree with the decisions themselves, they will support the mission.
1. Failure to Be Humble
Humility, or a lack thereof, is a theme that runs through this whole list. As Jim Collins says in “Good to Great,” the most effective leaders are humble and strong-willed rather than outgoing and full of ego. Unfortunately, the technology industry has a lot of big egos and charlatanism, and the snake-oil tactics aren’t limited to outward-facing communications. Ego-driven business execs often try to “sell” internally, rather than admit what they don’t know and learn from the folks around them. They don’t call it a technology company for nothing. Without the technologists and product people, there would be no company. Be humble.
Kevin Fortuna and Marty Abbott are partners with AKF Partners.
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