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24 May 2000
"I'm the cuckoo in the nest, the only non-IT person here," was the honest admission from Sir John Harvey-Jones, better known as his TV persona 'The Troubleshooter', who was speaking at the Institute of Directors last week.
Although Jones admits his ignorance of IT, he knows a hell of a lot about running a business. His colourful career has included chairman of ICI from 1982 to 1987, and chairman of the Economist group and Guinness Peat Aviation. He has also served in the Navy and has written several books on management.
If recent research is to be believed, it is the Harvey-Joneses of this world that technical management should be listening to and aspiring to emulate. A report from the National Computing Centre (NCC) released this month said the successful IT leader is "a manager first and technologist second". The NCC showed that, increasingly, leadership roles are going to non-IS business managers and the trend is set to continue.
Jones may be part of the old school for some, but for IT managers he's most definitely the future.
| On dot.coms |
| "Because I'm so bloody old, I've made every mistake in the book. Almost without exception, dot.coms lack a certain maturity in management, mainly because they haven't learned from their mistakes. "UK companies have never moved fast enough. The good thing now is the rate of growth in new, young companies. However, we haven't reached a critical mass of potential survivors yet, nowhere near. "You have to kiss a lot of frogs to get a prince. An awful lot are going to end in tears, both for their management and their investors. I'm not keen on venture capitalists, because they tend to try to squeeze out the original business owners. I'm all for business angels." |
| On information overload |
| "I don't believe in information overload for managers. I don't believe there's only one way of doing things; it's up to the person making the decision to filter out unnecessary information. "I wouldn't put my faith in software filters. You have to allow maximum access to information, and encourage people to tell it how it is. At the moment we're too centralised; without finding out what's happening on the battlefield, the generals won't know what to do." |
| On the role of IT |
| "I've had a mania for the last 25 years to impress upon companies that the key to business strength is speed. The future lies in companies taking advantage of IT systems to do something new, rather than use IT systems to modernise and mechanise what they already do. "No one is going to survive by doing what everyone else does. You have to have a unique IT system to do in-house what will make you unique as a company." |
| On outsourcing |
| "Outsourcing is not a full-life contract, it's a partnership. It can become a straitjacket; it's important to outsource to a company that is well-capitalised and on the cutting edge." |
| On the importance of open systems |
| "In 1982 I sat down with my IT guy and asked him to build a system whereby everyone at ICI could talk to anyone else. This is important, otherwise no-one is free to use their experience, and communication is too slow. "Businesses hardly ever communicate enough. Being at the bottom of an organisation is like being at the bottom of a mine - you don't hear anything." |
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