Invest to create better IT leaders

The first recommendation looks at the role of leaders, with our Agenda Setters saying companies shouldn't forget to develop proper IT leadership in the rush to improve skills.

Jan Babiak, managing partner at Ernst & Young's IS assurance & advisory service, says firms should invest more in creating better IT leaders.

'When I look across the spectrum of things that we need to do as technology leaders, I think we need to invest more in creating better leaders at the top of IT organisations. I think so often we get caught up in investing in technology skills.'

Bill Gibbons, director for group technology services at Abbey, says the role of leadership should be differentiated from management.

'There's management and there's leadership. Leadership is dealing with culture and values, direction and motivation, while management is about the doing,' he says.

'It's about leadership and the broader perspective of how you attract people and once you've got them how you retain them and how you grow them, and how you're going to utilise them for the future.

'You will always need urgent requirements to be met, but somebody should stand back and take a broader perspective of what's happening,' he says.

Babiak says IT leaders should always try to think not just about today's technology challenges, but to prepare for the needs of tomorrow where possible.

'Sometimes we get too caught up in making that cost saving now, and not thinking that actually you can spend an extra 25 per cent now for the heritage of the next generation,' she says.

'There's an adage that a politician thinks about the next election; while a statesman thinks about the next generation. What IT should always be is the statesman thinking about the next generation.'

Develop a wider range of career paths

Another crucial issue is the need for organisations to develop a range of career paths for IT staff, offering different routes for growth, depending on personal preferences.

While some technology staff may wish to remain technical throughout their careers, others may be suited to a range of other roles, such as being the conduit between IT and the rest of the business.

Dana Gordon-Davis, director at investment bank CIB Partners, says the immediate demands of today have to be matched against future career growth.

'It's about defining a person's career path and their opportunity in the organisation, as well as defining the specific skills that you need now. You've got to manage both otherwise I don't think it fits,' he says.

Gibbons says people must be shown the long-term opportunities they have.

'It's demonstrating opportunity going forward that isn't just about the pure technical roles, the traditional perception of IT. It's demonstrating opportunity and longer-term commitment to the individual,' he says.

'Sometimes there's a resistance to going from an old technology to a new technology, because you've been based in it for so long, but given the opportunity of a lateral movement into something like relationship management can help motivate staff.'

Peter Sommer, a research fellow at the London School of Economics, says firms should not overlook the role of corporate culture, warning that it's easy to trap people in certain roles.

'Some corporate cultures don't have flexibility, they think they've got a person in because they have specific skills, so that is the only career path they can follow. If they want to do something else they have to join another company,' he says.

Promote and develop cross-functional skills

A key recommendation from the panel overlaps with previous recommendations made by our Agenda Setters, covering the need for a range of skills in IT staff.

Matt Bross, chief technology officer at BT, says re-skilling is a major issue.

'It's not hard to get the people, it's hard to get the right people. What I need is a converged set of skills that allows them to solve now the new problems I'm facing,' he says.

'How many people do you have that can serve as a "Rosetta stone": that can translate the complexity of the underlying technology into the simplicity of consumption in use.'

The issue is not about technical skills, but ensuring that IT staff are business-aware.

'You want people with the combination of business and organisational sense. It's business strategy together with the IT technical skills base,' says Sommer.

Matthew Timms, internet channel director at Lloyds TSB, agrees.

'It's about cross-over skills. Putting a technician in charge of managing a project is a waste of a technician. What's needed is that blend of IT and business,' he says.

The problem for IT leaders is finding people capable of developing and nurturing those skills.

Richard Adams, senior vice president for Sabre Travel Network in Europe, says few people have that ability.

'It's a very special skill. The primary skill is understanding how the organisation wants to run the business, and then being able to overlay that with information management and information flow, without being wrapped-up in what technology makes that happen,' he says.

Show people that IT can be exciting and relevant

People considering a career in IT are often unaware of the range of interesting challenges they could work with.

Adams says part of the problem is that IT is not always perceived as a route to executive success.

'I wonder how many young people look at the IT function and think the route to the chief executive's chair is through the marketing function, or the finance function,' he says.

Bross says a challenge for IT leaders is to make the role fun and to communicate to their staff why what they do matters.

'To attract people it's got to be interesting, it's got to be fun. They have to think they're making a difference,' he says.

'If people fundamentally understand why their innovation and their enthusiasm matters, then you can attract people and you can retain them.'

Thinking about IT in that way can help remove stereotypes and show that technology can appeal to a wider range of people.

'It's about making IT more approachable to people that would ordinarily think, "I'm excluded from IT because I wasn't good at maths, or because I wasn't good at sciences as a child",' says Gordon-Davis.

Working from home and flexible working practices can also help make a role more appealing, especially for women that are keen to move into technology.

Mix computer science with other disciplines at university

The experts say that computer science courses should be mixed with other disciplines, such as business or life sciences, to give graduates a more rounded and relevant education.

And more people should be persuaded to pursue degrees, rather than just basic IT courses.

'You can teach people about technologies, but getting that broader perspective from a university degree is very important,' says Gibbons.

Sommer suggests that firms should be working more closely with universities to stay focused on issues that are of practical use in the commercial world.

He says companies should work with universities to shape internship programmes to be useful for both students and employers.

'If businesses are prepared to understand how academia works, then you can have a stream of people coming through who understand how the organisations work, and some of you will be able to recruit directly from it,' says Sommer.

Babiak adds that university is not the only way to teach people the skills they need.

'What makes a great "Rosetta stone" five or 10 years into someone's career is the right experience. At best, the university is going to be teaching the alphabet - we have to teach them the words and the paragraphs,' she says.

And IT staff can be released to the rest of the business to broaden their experience.

'We have to be selfless leaders, letting them go off and do a secondment in internal audit, or whatever it is that they need,' she says.

What the experts say...

Matt Bross, chief technology officer, BT:

I think what we're talking about here is how many people do you have access to in the IT world that can serve as that Rosetta stone; that can translate the complexity of the underlying technology into the simplicity of consumption in use that is needed.

Dana Gordon-Davis, director, CIB partners:

It's about making IT more approachable to people that would ordinarily think, "Oh gosh, I'm excluded from IT because I wasn't good at maths, or because I wasn't good at sciences as a child".

Richard Adams, senior VP, Sabre Travel Network:

If you were to look at 16-year olds choosing their A-levels, thinking about their careers and university courses, what do they think of IT? Do they understand that there's a breadth of career opportunity within the function, which goes beyond the boffin?

Jan Babiak, managing partner, Ernst & Young's IS assurance & advisory service:

There's an adage that a politician thinks about the next election, while a statesman thinks about the next generation. IT should always be the statesman thinking about the next generation.

Bill Gibbons, director: group technology services, Abbey:

It's about demonstrating the opportunity going forward that isn't just pure technical roles, the traditional perception of IT. It's demonstrating opportunity and longer-term commitment to the individual.

Peter Sommer, research fellow, London School of Economics:

It's not only training and growing people with the skills you want, it's understanding that you may need to take people and enable them to retrain themselves into the skills that you actually want.

Matthew Timms, internet channel director, Lloyds TSB:

The enjoyable part of leadership is looking at organisation and making sure that you're giving value to the business that you're supporting; the less enjoyable part is making it work from the managerial perspective.

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