One was a CEO who hadn't any technical background, but he knew what ICT could and could not do for his company.
One day we rewired all of our network, a massive weekend job. He was there, even if the only thing he could do was pulling network cables out of bags and straightening them. He saw who and what worked or not, he saw where we struggled even if he didn't understand a word of our technical mumbo jumbo.
I found out he was always there on the ground for every major operation in his company, not only ICT. The result was he knew the company inside out. Nobody ever tried bullshitting him. I still have massive respect for him, years later.
Then there is exhibit B, a manager from the 'you dont have to understand ICT to manage it' school. Everybody under him spends 3/4 of the time in meetings or filing useless forms. Nobody dares touching important things, so hard decisions get pushed in the future. It happens urgent work needs doing and the only person capable of doing it sits twiddling thumbs as the spreadsheet says maximum team capacity has already been reached. He redefined the words 'major incident' as there were to many under the old definition. His teams keep losing important members, everybody hates each other, work that should take 10 minutes takes months. But he always has a spreadsheet demonstrating it is not his fault.
That's not a CEO job. His job is to make sure the enterprise is funded and sets a vision.
The first example must be a small company.
2. This sounds like a manager in an enterprise level company
If you choose to work where a multi-level manager structure exists you should give that manager respect because he has to navigate a political landscape that takes certain skills.
Besides managing people and knowing what customers want have nothing to do with knowing your specific skills. Should the CEO know marketing, accounting, legal, etc as well as the experts in their positions?
And how many hours per day does it take to "set a vision"? How do you develop this vision if you know nothing about the company you're running? This is how you end up with these awful celebrity CEOs who wouldn't notice if you swapped the company they're running with one that produces toothpaste. They're too busy on CNBC and Fox Business talking about their amazing "vision".
1 was for a 500 people company. Not small not large. The company grw while others in the sector shrunk, so he did well.
Considering 2,this demonstrates what is wrong with big enterprise. If the politics are more important than the work, the work won't get done. Just like I don't have respect for Trump just because he managed to rule the most powerfull country in the world, I don't have to respect a manager who's team fails again and again, after which they get thrown under the bus just to save the face of a higher up.
Note how the CEO mentioned had no ICT knowledge, he just knew enough to knew where he stood. Same for marketing, accounting etc..
One was a CEO who hadn't any technical background, but he knew what ICT could and could not do for his company.
One day we rewired all of our network, a massive weekend job. He was there, even if the only thing he could do was pulling network cables out of bags and straightening them. He saw who and what worked or not, he saw where we struggled even if he didn't understand a word of our technical mumbo jumbo.
I found out he was always there on the ground for every major operation in his company, not only ICT. The result was he knew the company inside out. Nobody ever tried bullshitting him. I still have massive respect for him, years later.
Then there is exhibit B, a manager from the 'you dont have to understand ICT to manage it' school. Everybody under him spends 3/4 of the time in meetings or filing useless forms. Nobody dares touching important things, so hard decisions get pushed in the future. It happens urgent work needs doing and the only person capable of doing it sits twiddling thumbs as the spreadsheet says maximum team capacity has already been reached. He redefined the words 'major incident' as there were to many under the old definition. His teams keep losing important members, everybody hates each other, work that should take 10 minutes takes months. But he always has a spreadsheet demonstrating it is not his fault.
I know who gets the respect.