Posting Will Be Light

I'm busy at work this week and I'm closing on a house, so there's a lot going on. I'll be back next week. (Of course, if I were Instapundit, I could have guest bloggers ... but ... )

The Great Paul Strassman

Paul Strassman is one of the seminal thinkers on the topic of the economics of IT. The headline link is to his own web site. If you have an interest in this area then you should become acquainted with Mr. Strassman.

The Problem of Personality

I have been working in IT for almost 30 years now and years ago I noticed something that I still can't wrap my puny brain around: Why do most executives display similar personality behaviors?

Let me start by saying that most executives I have worked with have been very able businessmen. (And let me also say that I have worked with many female managers but only male executives. I didn't cause it, it's just the way it has been. If you know of a lady executive (VP or higher) in an industrial company, feel free to add a comment on whether or not my observation holds for women as well.)

Let's call my prototypical executive the Proto-E. In my years I've seen every personality type the human race has to offer at all levels of the business; introverts, extroverts, shy, gregarious, smart, not-so-smart, easy-going, stubborn, you name it. When I get to Proto-Es though the behaviors tend to coalesce around a certain type.

Proto-Es usually have calm personalities. They speak deliberately. They do not often make jokes. They do not often respond to jokes made in their presence. They are almost always pleasant. (In fact, I have seen them behave very pleasantly even when delivering scathing criticisms.)

And they are almost always forceful and direct.

I can only remember one Proto-E I would call indecisive but that was only when he was out of his comfort zone. By training and experience he was an engineer and when speaking of engineering, he was knowledgeable and decisive. When pulled into Accounting or IT or general operations he was much less so. In general, though, he was a good executive because he had a good staff in the areas in which he was weak and this was probably by design.

Another behavior I've noticed is that Proto-Es rarely talk about themselves. Most of us will talk about ourselves until we've bored our companions to tears. The sound of our own voices is sweet, sweet, music to our ears. Proto-Es though; well, it's not so. If I ask a Proto-E how his wife and kids are doing then I'll get a polite response, "fine, thanks". And that's about it.

Now here's my question. Where is the cause-and-effect here? From time-to-time I've had illusions that I could aspire to executive-hood. I believe I still can but only if I owned my own business. I do not believe that I can as long as I'm employed by someone else in a corporate environment. No board of directors is going to accept my quirks, my dry sense of humor. And I'm in no mood to change them. I like my quirks.

But do Proto-Es become executives because they have Proto-E personalities or do they adapt and adopt Proto-E personalities as they move up the corporate ladder? The only way I could personally know is to know a Proto-E who moved up the food chain from the time he or she was only a gleam in the board of directors eyes. I've never known one that long.

So, having rambled too long on this for the moment, I'll come back to the question later. Why do Proto-Es dominate the executive suite?

The Slow, Painful Demise of Strategic IT - Numero Dos

This posting on CIO is well worth a quick follow-up posting. Christopher Koch makes a substantive argument that CIOs should always report to CEOs and that when they don't, it is a dysfunctional relationship that damages the organization. I've worked both ways and I'm not convinced either way but Koch makes a powerful argument. Read the whole thing.

The Slow, Painful Demise of Strategic IT

Does IT reporting to the CFO or CEO actually make a difference? The iconic Jack Welsh thinks so. The article on the CIO website is a couple of years old but the topic is still valid. Keep reading through the comments to get some interesting aspects to the question.

The Interviews So Far

Next up is an interview with an accomplished senior IT executive and his view of the state of Information Technologies. In the meantime, please take another look at the perspectives of a career counselor and a corporate recruiter.

Investing in the IT Staff - with Gino Macarroni

http://capcom-it.blogspot.com/2009/03/investing-in-information-technologies_07.html

So You Think You Know What a Recruiter Thinks? - with Diane Plymale

http://capcom-it.blogspot.com/2009/04/so-you-think-you-know-what-recruiters.html

The Problem of Personality - Watch This Space

Here's something that's bothered me for years - decades even. In almost every corporate organization I've worked in, the senior executives seem to have all of their natural-born personalities smushed out of them in the climb up the ladder. I've been pondering this lately and I'll have some thoughts on that soon. If you're breathless in anticipation you may want to check back in a day or two.