Recognise the technologists... it's critical to business success

In our ever more technological world, there is an increasing problem with retaining technical people and skills. Many traditional companies have seen their business thrive through good sales people, but in the modern world, they can’t do it alone. They need the innovation and passion of technologists to win on the next part of their journey.

But why are we losing these technical people?

Organisations seem to be very slow to understand the importance of technology people. Worse, there is a lack of understanding of what motivates technology people and what a business needs to do to keep them excited about their day-to-day work.

Ultimately technologists have an enormous amount to offer business. The range is of benefits is very broad, from making sure that data flows through an organisation seamlessly or developing the next killer application that revolutionises the customer experience.

Either way, these skills need to be harnessed, focused and developed.

Often I see a group that is too divorced from the business to understand what it needs to do. It becomes a service (an overhead) and cannot generate the value the business needs.

Often I see a group that is taken for granted. It may have developed amazing technology and made a big difference to the sale, but the sales people are still taking the credit.

Often I see a group that is shackled with the badge of “IT”. There is confusion as the front office starts to develop its own technology skills, creating a feeling of competition or that one group is better than the other.

I have been in many sales meetings where the technology team has been the differentiating factor, meaning that we won, rather than lost a contract. But somehow, when we celebrate the win, the technology contribution is often forgotten.

The reality is that these successes are a combination of all the skills. Together they ultimately leads to the win and we must be better at recognising this combination.

I often find myself describing the importance of technology as a binary thing. If you don’t have the technology aspects of your business covered, you simply won’t win in the market. You also won’t be cost effective at an operational level. Either way the business is going to suffer.

So, are you recognising the importance of your technologists?

If not, think about this more. As has been said many times in many articles, it is amazing how powerful the simple act of recognition can be.