The skills every IT executive should have

During numerous conversations with IT managers, I discovered one interesting fact. Those managers, who still have not grew up to IT executives, are convinced that they need to have a full range of technical skills to perform well in C-level positions.

To understand the nature of this delusion it is necessary to review different types of skills, that help IT managers to achieve results at the different levels of IT organisational structure.

IT managers and supervisors are responsible for day-by-day work of IT department. They don't directly provide any specific IT services to the clients. So, they just drive IT operational effectiveness and optimisation of IT processes.

To do this in the most effective way, IT managers should have the following stack of skills:

1. Technical skills, which are mostly defined by the education and profession. For example, network engineer skills include everything related to virtualization, automation, routing and switching, VoIP, cloud, SDN, WiFi and network security. Developer skills are related with computing knowledge, fluency in programming languages, modern frameworks, effective debugging, and problem solving. Technical skills are necessary to start and further your career as an individual contributor or at the entry level managerial positions.

2. Managerial skills that help to organise the work process you are responsible for. Planning, budgeting, development of new IT processes, project management, regular meetings and performance reviews conduction, time management and many other managerial skills are required to effectively manage IT teams. Usually, individual contributors do not need many of them to perform their work well.

3. Leadership skills, which are mostly not about processes, but people, vision, strategy, inspiration, and empathy. Outstanding IT leaders usually make a great progress in enhancing performance of IT departments through effective leading their teams.

The amount of time an IT manager spends on demonstrating each of these skills is a function of his level in the organisational hierarchy.

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For example, let's imagine a career path of Jane - the young IT developer who recently graduated from the university. At the very beginning of her career as an individual contributor she will make a lot of efforts to gain necessary experience while implementing her knowledge to develop digital products. Her technical skills will have a 95% of importance to succeed in daily tasks performing while the remaining 5% of her efforts will be allocated to manage efficiently her time.

Then progressing in 3-5 years her career toward to the tech lead position Jane will lead her first IT developers' team. This is the entry managerial position, so you still don't need to be a great leader. In line with scrum process requirements Jane will demonstrate her managerial skills conducting all necessary meetings and performance reviews of her staff. Now she responsible not only for personal time management, but for meeting deadlines by the whole team. But still, she has some tasks as, for example, code review or tech newbies onboarding, which requires a lot of technical skills in her personal stack. She strongly needs to have an image of professional in face of her team, who can still perform well individual contributor's work. She needs to be a person, who can give a valuable tech advice to any of her team members and to control the quality of their results. So, proportion of her managerial and technical skills should be 40% and 60% respectively.

Maybe in next 5-7 years Jane will progress to a CTO position, and then she will manage not individual contributors, but managers. And necessity of her tech skills will significantly decrease. She needs them only to define the strategy of technology stack diversification, solution of the architectural tasks and driving the most important problems solving process. Her subordinates don't require her technical expertise anymore - they know how to do things better than her and probably have better technical skills. At this level of IT organization hierarchy, it is totally normal, because usually you will have the following stack of skills: 20% for technical, 50% for management and 30% for leadership skills. Spending more time on the strategic planning, managing workforce pay and benefits, authorising training and development will have a greater positive impact on the organisation's goals achievement than learning a new Java framework.

In case of success and maintaining the outstanding performance results Jane possibly will be proposed to join the management board as a VP of technology. This mean now she will manage CTO, CIO, CISO, PMO and Head of CIO office directly. But wait a minute, how about technical skills? Jane have never been neither network engineer nor security operations specialist, so that is a great problem... or not? Frankly speaking, almost none of the chairpersons never was. Stack of Jane's skills to take a place of VP of technology should be the following: 5% technical, 35% managerial and 60% leadership. That is the skills every IT executive should have. No one need you to put changes in the router's configuration files or respond in person to security incidents at VP's position. Here you will be responsible for the people management, planning and maintaining budgets, aligning IT and business strategies, providing your vision on organisation's technical domain development and other things which are too far from your technical expertise.

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The most popular mistake in all organisations is that IT managers are often promoted because of their technical work expertise alone. This may work only in the entry level managerial positions, where managerial success is too narrowly defined in technical terms. But such promotions to the high-level positions can have significant negative impact on the company's goals achievement success.

To be successful as a member of the management board you need to be extremely good in finance, leadership, management and have outstanding organisational skills. IT executives with the poor people management skills often demoralise the workforce and significantly reduce the whole company's operational effectiveness.

The other interesting outcome is that experienced non-IT executive leaders can shift to IT executive positions and be there more successful than the employees with a solid technical background. That is a life and I personally know such examples.

So, if you are feeling like a young Jane and want to build your career path to IT executive role, think in advance of your managerial and leadership skills development. In the end of the day, it will play a crucial role in possibility of your desirable promotion. Participate in mentorship programs and never stop to learn things that play a great role in your career.