ENews & Tech The rise of Nontechnical Paths to Tech Leadership

While tech skills remain fundamental, tech leaders increasingly hail from nontechnical backgrounds, where many developed critical thinking, communication, and other soft skills.

IT talent needs are changing as many enterprises today harness disruptive technologies—especially the cloud and digital – to drive business transformation and growth. As these new and emerging technologies upend business as usual, more IT organisations are seeking to complement highly skilled technologists with colleagues who speak and understand the language of the business and can help to cover the gamut of responsibilities technology teams are expected to deliver to remain competitive. And with newer enterprise IT roles – such as strategists and financial planners – being created, IT organisations are increasingly embracing diverse, nontechnical mindsets and opening up new paths to tech leadership.

This shift is becoming apparent in many ways. In making hiring decisions, CIOs expect three soft skills – creativity, cognitive flexibility, and emotional intelligence – to grow significantly in importance during the next few years, according to respondents to a 2018 Deloitte survey. Meanwhile, demand for technology leaders’ soft skills is coming up to par with demand for technical dexterity. According to a 2020 study conducted by Deloitte and WSJ Intelligence, 87% of CEOs agree it is “more important now for technology leaders to understand business operations, strategy, and innovation than to have deep expertise in technology systems.”

Wanted: Technologists With Diverse Experiences

The idea that a nontechnical candidate can bring a broader perspective is still relatively new. According to Rae Parent, head of enterprise change at T. Rowe Price, “Tech recruiters, particularly those looking to fill more senior-level roles, can be very focused on computer science or engineering degrees earned early on and, as a result, can miss out on candidates with the different types of perspectives provided by a nontraditional degree and on-the-job technology learning.”

While tech leaders can still ensure IT’s operational reliability, their strategic role as an enabler for the cloud and digital transformation often requires a broader skill set. “You need good, deep technical skills, and you need soft skills, which I prefer to call ‘consulting skills,’” says Melissa Bell, CIO at Danaher. “You need to really understand the business – its strategy, customers, challenges – and build relationships to effectively influence transformation. Technology is moving so fast that learning agility is required to survive in this environment.”

Many of this new breed of tech leaders came to the role with a deep understanding of the business and its customers. Sally Gilligan, CIO at Gap Inc., brought her deep understanding of the customer and the business that she gained as a leader in Gap Inc.’s supply chain. “For that reason, I was asked to lead our tech transformation, which requires bringing an organisation through large-scale change,” she says.

Parent’s soft skills, learned through studying the liberal arts, help her to drive meaningful and actionable discussions with teams of technologists. “Solid technical perspective is a critical part of problem-solving, but leaders also need to understand how to foster collaboration across diverse teams and make space for ideas that are not rooted first in technology,” she says.

Of course, many technologists have developed these leadership skills, but people often revert to their comfort zones. Parent says, “Sometimes, the deeper technologists will resort to technology-first problemsolving, whereas those who have had a variety of academic and professional experiences tend to ask questions of more stakeholders, collect multiple points of view, and make connections across technology and business teams.”

How to Leaders

Identify

Next-Gen

Tech

A recent report from Deloitte LLP’s U.S. CIO Program highlights the following suggestions to help guide CIOs and other leaders looking to fill IT talent gaps and build a more diverse and inclusive culture:

• Cast a wider net. Find diverse ideas and talent by building relationships outside the company and industry, including with local and national conference boards and learning and development programs, among others.

• Look beyond the degree.

When developing, hiring, and retraining IT talent, consider the individual’s learning agility and other soft skills, which may matter more than educational background or formal work experience.

• Seek diverse perspectives.

Invite new ideas from across the organisation to better understand how different people view problems and how they might solve them.

Consider creating customised learning curricula based on the breadth of technical and interpersonal/business skills required in today’s IT organisations.

• Keep curricula current.

• Upskill and reskill.

Some organisations cannot hire enough qualified people to fill the demand for specialised tech roles, such as in cybersecurity and the cloud, and are launching initiatives to upskill and reskill employees to fill them.

Some companies are developing fluency programs that bridge the gap between technology and the business. Such programs may also help tech leaders identify new talent to fill strategic roles that align business issues with tech solutions.

Seek opportunities to speak to young people about diverse paths to tech careers, emphasising the importance of working hard and delivering what people want. As professionals with more nontechnical and diverse experiences, education, and mindsets enter technology organisations, new paths to tech leadership are emerging. Yet that doesn’t mean technology leaders can back off—continued commitment to diversity and inclusion can remain top of mind to enable this new breed of tech leader to effectively build bridges between the business and technology. Over time, the distinction will likely melt away: All businesses will be technology-minded, and all technology organisations will be business-minded.

• Learn a common language.

• Broaden young minds.