SOUND OFF: IT Leaders Share Their Toughest Single Talent Problem

On April 25, in our e-newsletter, The Heller Report and in social media, we asked members of our network of technology executives this question: "If you were to wave a magic wand and solve only one talent-related challenge, what would it be?"

We received a large number of responses, most of which, we noticed, fell into one of the following four categories:

1. People Development
2. Business Skills and Knowledge
3. Recruiting Process
4. Talent Pipeline

Enjoy these responses from your peers, which I deliberately kept anonymous so people would be open and frank. Please feel free to add your own perspective in the Comments section!

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SOUND OFF: If you were to wave a magic wand and solve only one talent-related challenge, what would it be?

People Development

"One of the most difficult challenges I've had is succession planning. Ensuring that the talented technical people in the organization can get the right opportunities, projects, or stretch assignments to move to the next level especially when that level is Manager/Director. Many have proven themselves technically, managing projects, or even solid consulting/client interaction but when it comes to managing/directing an organization some are just not ready for it or are not that good at it. And as hard as I've tried to develop the level below me I have only been successful once, that a person under me replaced me when I left."

"My talent-related challenge is: How can we keep the IT staff motivated to learn new skills and to use those new skills to drive solutions to our current and future IT problems?"

"What I see is a gap in management’s ability to communicate with IT. All too often I see managers asking the wrong groups in IT to do something. My wand would create more managers/directors with the capability to understand and correctly assign tasks."

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Business Skills and Knowledge

"We need to solve the ‘analytics bridge to the business partners.’ Too much of IT is still focused on software and transactions when the real agility and benefit is in the information. Unfortunately we do not have those people who can work with the business to listen and develop the ideas working with the technical staff to develop the dashboards, reports, etc., and who can also educate the business on the power of what we possess and how to live and thrive in a dynamic, self-service information world and away from the monthly binders. I know several universities are starting programs in this area, I am involved in a couple of these myself, but this talent is critical to move to the next level of performance and speed.  (long answer to a short question)."

"As an ex CIO my answer to Martha's query would be "business insight". Talent, whether technical or otherwise without context is not worth much and the recent increase in specialisation has created air tight verticals and horizontals which make technology management extremely difficult. This explains why increasingly CIOs move down in the CXO pecking order."

"… giving employees the ability to see the scope of their decisions, issues, needs, wants, recommendations and complaints against the backdrop of the entire company, department, team, project stakeholders, and the priorities that have been established.  I believe we have good people doing their best but often without the realistic understanding of how the entire organization is operating.  They solve their individual problem or cover a localized concern without seeing how that decision will affect the broader whole."

"Finding talent that can think beyond their silo and understand the entire business process."

"Finding IT talent with strong business acumen to match technology/process/practice discipline skills."

"If I could solve one talent-related challenge it would be how to find/develop technically competent folks who understand the customer’s point of view, e.g. don’t schedule six hours of maintenance from 10 AM to 4 PM on Saturday (yes, people work on Saturday); don’t tell me that the network is up so everything is fine -- my application is not working; I understand that we need to identify international employees for security reasons, but don’t use a label in their e-mail address that offends them, etc.  Technically brilliant, but tone deaf staff and management are a menace."

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Recruiting Process

"I would want my hiring managers to quit looking for "point specific" skills and adopt a "best available athlete" strategy.  If our line of work, if you have technical aptitude and learning agility, and a good dose of leadership, that is far more important than specific technical skills."

"Recruiting takes too long – how do we make it easier to hook the hiring pools up with the open position?"

"The two related Talent Problems that I most often address with my coaching clients are: 1 - How to conduct effective interviews, and 2 - How to prepare for effective interviews. The majority of my clients have no structured process to identify their position needs for each hire, and as a result are missing a constructive process for preparing each manager involved in interviewing the candidate. To compound the problem, few managers know how to conduct an effective interview to truly assess the candidate's likely fit and performance, if hired."

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Talent Supply

"From my IT experience, I believe the talent which is always in short supply is the person who: a. Technical people want to work & deliver for ; b. Customers respect and want to hire away from you; and c. Senior managers gight to have or to keep as their right hand. The person described above almost always has to have great problem solving skills, has to be bright / quick on their feet, has to have human being communication skills, has to have enough technical moxie to hold his/her own with the technical team, has to be able to translate business problem to business process / data / people requirements, and has to be able to deliver on time, on budget, on quality, on scope, on value."

"I would increase the number of American kids majoring in Computer Science. There is a huge shortage of entry level talent, and it's getting worse. The demand is growing faster than the supply. India and other offshore sites can fill niches, but we need IT savvy people right in our offices, working closely with our end-users."

"If I could solve only one talent problem, the top of my list would be project/program managers. So much of what we do for the organization revolves around effectively implementing projects. While the nature of the project is changing, effectively deploying projects is a constant. Having said that, if the only talent challenge I solve was project/program management, I would be a failure in my role as CIO. A successful IT organization requires a high performance team that encompasses a full skill portfolio."

Please add your own response in the Comments section!