How To Talk Like a CIO

itwbennett writes "Today's CIOs speak business-buzzwords as a second language. And there's a good reason for that. There is a trend among CIOs to distance themselves from being regarded as technologists and to put themselves forward as business strategists. It boils down to one simple rule: Just as you should never be the first to mention compensation in the interview process, you should never be the first to break out the tech jargon in a business setting."

From TFA

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The senior VP had serious technical chops, but he wasn't about to demonstrate them in front of his peers. He feared, justifiably, that if he did so he'd get classified as a techie and taken out of consideration as a possible future CEO.

For any /.er working in an environment like that, I'd like to think this would be a sign that it was time to get the hell out.

Problem

[girlintraining]

...You should never be the first to break out the tech jargon in a business setting."

"So guys, our, umm, magic glowing rectangles have been, uhh, a bit less magical this week. Apparently an, umm... black box that communicates using, uhh... a special language... er, well, stopped speaking with another black box that's just like it, except not ours. So we, uhh, asked our engineers to look into that, and yeeeeah... they're ah, still doing that now. It's been about four days, and uhh, they're not exactly sure where the problem is, so if we could, you know..."

(Engineer bursts into the room) "It was the router you bleeping idiots! If you'd just told us your network was down we'd have fixed it in TWO MINUTES, but your work order was blabbering on about magical boxes and glowing rectangles and we thought you were all drugged or somesuch and called 911 instead. It was only after someone in the NOC got back from their smoke break they saw the line was dead and dispatched a tech."

(sounds of approaching sirens)

"You deserve this," says the network engineer, storming off.

Re:Easy

[phantomfive]

Believe it or not, that's the opposite of what the summary says.

Great article, thanks for posting!

[JimtownKelly]

Great CIOs, demonstrate a balance between understanding the business and understanding the technology in their communications. Fortunately I've worked for a couple of these in my career. Few and far between.