Defining Business Smarts
Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.
CEOs, CIOs, CTOs and CFOs constantly complain about not finding enough seasoned IT people--project managers, developers and architects--who understand business. It’s a common theme heard from corporate recruiters, HR people and headhunters. It’s even plastered on lengthy job descriptions. Whatever the lingo, the plea is: “We need people with business acumen.” In short, business smarts.
But what does business acumen mean, exactly? An MBA, special business training, industry- or company-specific business information? It’s time to find out. So I asked managers, company decision-makers and some pundits/analysts what exactly “business smarts” means. The Seattle-based Institute For Corporate Productivity recently surveyed business decision-makers to find out exactly what business intelligence means. The results proved that there was a communication dilemma--a failure to communicate on the same level.
“The trick in any organization is to find common ground, a lingua franca that helps everyone put different points of view into a larger context,” explains i4cp’s senior vice president of research Mark Vickers. “The IT department may use technological lingo that others can barely grasp, and the finance department may glibly expound about spreadsheets dense with data. Ultimately, though, everyone should …
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"Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences." - Freeman Dyson |
