Communication is the key: Silicon.com's IT on Board event

The strongest messages to come out of Silicon.com's IT on Board conference were that IT deserves a place in the upper echelons of most companies and that IT managers need to communicate better and become more business-minded if they want to get there. But even the best talkers need someone to hear them: business managers also have a major role to play.

David Taylor, president of Certus, an association which aims to raise the profile of IT professionals in the UK, believes that if IT doesn't have a place on the board, businesses will suffer. "IT is absolutely core to companies, so it is significant at board level. There is a lot of IT that could and should be put in place for competitive advantage but that is not happening because there is no one to represent IT at board level," he said.

One Silicon.com reporter recently had a conversation about technology with the financial director of a medium-sized insurance company. At one point, the FD said: "IT doesn't deserve a place on our board, because it can't give us competitive edge and does nothing to protect shareholders' interests. This is the ultimate responsibility of the board."

This is typical of the attitudes held by many senior managers. So what's the problem? Most of the delegates and speakers at the half day conference agreed that when an IT professional gets to board level, the job is no longer about technology, but about communication - and they need to communicate well in order to get there.

Professor Chris Edwards of the Cranfield School of Management told the delegates that companies need someone who can communicate the strategic aim of any IT investment. "You say to a business manager, 'What do you want from IT?', they say, 'I want something bigger than what I have now'. They don't see the vision. We need someone here who is an architect who can say, 'Have you thought about this?'"

One of the few IT directors to have made it to the very top is Brian Davies, now CEO of Nationwide building society. In a video interview published by Silicon.com last year, he said that to make it to board level, the IT professional "needs more extravert skills than maybe the traditional scientist is deemed to have and to stop seeing what they do as an island".

Without that IT vision and understanding at the top of the company, Davies admits that Nationwide may not have made technology-dependent advances such as becoming an Internet service provider and embracing ecommerce.

David Wareing, IS manager at Daewoo Electronics, believes "macho management" is still present in most organisations. "Many things are possible using IT, but there is a fundamental gap in the understanding of what is possible and the time scales required," he told Silicon.com.

But having once been in the managing director role himself, Wareing firmly believes responsibility does not only fall on the shoulders of the IT professional. "Many companies cannot exist without IT infrastructure. Therefore it is the responsibility of the board/individual directors/senior managers to gain an understanding of the technical implications of what they do," he argued.

Very few companies have CEOs with the IT pedigree of Davies. But that isn't necessarily a disadvantage, as long as IT has an ally on the board. Anne Brown-Robins, IT director at law firm Penningtons, told Silicon.com: "If I didn't have a close relationship with my finance director I would have serious problems getting work done. When I ask him for money he trusts me and doesn't ask to see a tangible return on investment."

What became clear by the end of the event was that IT can only do so much, and that without a receptive CEO or FD nothing will change. There are few organisations where the CEO truly understands technology and how it can take the company forward. Most IT people know that they should have board-level representation - even if they have a lot to learn about getting there. The IT on Board campaign will continue to equip ambitious IT managers with the information they need to do this.

Silicon.com's first event was a resounding success - but the next big step is to change the perceptions of IT among senior business managers, something which we aim to address.

If you have any ideas about what can be done, please send an email to lburroughes@silicon.com