CIOs Must Ditch the Techno Babble

All good points. We can all improve our communication skills and many of us need training. But the challenge increases when we have to communicate across boundaries of different kinds.

Nigel,

Thanks for stating what I think is obvious.  It's about the business first, and technology second.  Technology is absolutely critical today, however, it still runs second to business.  I worked in technology for many years, but started my career as a buyer for Bloomingdales.  I can't help but think in business terms, and it was actually detrimental at times for not towing the line of techno babble. 

The best CIOs and technology teams I worked with were always respectful of the business customers they served (internal or external) and never got "business first, technology second" out of order!

Kim, you have shed light on a very important point in communications. Usually, people need to polish their communication skills and they require trainings for it. Sometimes it is done at the varsity level where students are required to go through business communication courses. While sometimes people learn these skills at work through inhouse or exhouse trainings. 

I agree, of course, that most people need to learn communications skills -- and those who have the knack can always improve -- but I think in many cases it will need training.  The examples I have in mind, of smart IT guys who couldn't clarify what they were doing, were not examples of people who were going to change spontaneously.

Just my thought, anyway.  Are there vendors offering training in this specific area?  I guess so; it should certainly be a fertile field.

@syedsunair: I believe you and I agree that the audience must dictate the method of communication. And that is the case!

@Abdlah: Knowing the language of the trade is definetely an important aspect. But I think one should be careful with using the language. If I talk about technical terms with someone who has not exposure to CS he might not get me at all. 

OTOH, if I am in a presentation at a client or at my office I expect others to know the jargon and would communicate in a similar manner. Therefore, I believe we need to analyze our audience before we decide to use technical terms. 

@syedzunair: I do understand that the techno speak "babble is learnt over time whiles "in-speaking" or learning within the practicing environment. But it is also an aspect of professionalism that one needs to know how to communicate what one knows to an intended audience.

Fail to communicate efficiently to an audience and you create a recipe for disaster.

I am always ts amazed when discussions along this line come up. As a young student at Iowa State University who had just arrived from Africa with the intention of of studying Finance. I quickly caught onto a area of study known as Management Information Systems (MIS) and from the way most lecturers and university officials motivated students who opted for that course - looked into it and sooner that later changed my intended major.

In asking why MIS special, I learnt  that is was so because increasingly the computer savvy people working for businesses had a problem communicating with the business savvy ones and vice versa. And due to the need to bridge the existing divide, it was thought necessary to train people who understood a good amount of both in order that the apparent gap would be closed.

So many years after identifying the communication gap, I find it astonishing that the industry (ies) are failing to solve the problem of "jargon speak".

It is definitely critical that those who depend on IT can be made to understand how to translate the technology capabilities into business solutions to encourage efficient adoption.

Brian, I think technical jargon in whatever industry you are related to comes with the years to experience. After a while, one tends to take things for granted and use these words in normal day conversations. Some do it unintentionally while the others like you said do it to impress others. 

No doubt communication is a two way street. You need to understand the people to whom you are conversing and make sure you communicate to them in a manner that they are able to interpret you.

DukeW You mention that these other folks need to stop talking their ROI and FTE's, yet that is the language of business. That is how the people who hold the power and $$$ speak (in my case the private owners), therefore I need to get on their page not the other way around.

If you report to the COO, CFO or anyone else you need to get your message through to them using a language that they understand in order to get the right focus. In my case I report the CEO/Owner and he speaks the language of business. The more competent I speak his language and demonstrate I am not just a techno jock; the more trust I build through a common language and demonstrated use of that language. At least that is how it has worked for me.

On the other point you raise. Yes like you I have deployed many systems across the organization and in many cases I knew more than they did about their systems and operations, so we have travelled the same road. The difference is when I decided to make IT strategic, I stopped doing their job and for me I was lucky that we replaced critical business systems with in a few years of each other. Rather than IT take the lead in the train the trainer sessions on these new systems, I asked Finance and Operations to step up and own their systems.

In our firm we do business on both sides of the Canada/US border and I have different business systems for each side, plus finance, network, security, etc. In asking them to step up differently than before I used 2 points; the first was that IT was like languages. A different language for each operating system (We use 4 different OS) we have to know, each business system and operational regulations we have to meet, network and security, social media, and so on. They on the other hand had teams of specialists for US operations, Canadian Operations, and Finance operations. The second point was that they would have greater ownership on how they wanted to work.

The end result after some rocky starts is a better run operation with each area owning their respective business systems, IT being consulted on areas they don't know and we own the liaison with the vendors so we still maintain leadership as we had before. Rather than IT being the know it all group because we had to in how we used to work, we now work collaboratively, it results in better leverage of everyone's knowledge and skills and we work better as a team because of that.

So yes I changed how I speak from telling them to collaborating with them in a language they understand and we are better for it as an organization.