157. Skills to pay the bills (Condition #6: technical aptitude)

Every organization does complicated stuff that’s hard for the rest of us to understand. Not to mention, every organization has to somehow measure whether it’s doing that complicated stuff well or not, which is even more complicated. Add on top of that the fact that every organization’s complicated stuff affects groups and individuals inside and outside the organization in complicated ways. It’s a lot. It wouldn’t be very good if our CEO didn’t understand how our complex operations worked. It wouldn’t be good if none of the board members understood, either. But, let’s say we have a company that makes robots that perform brain surgery. Do you need your CEO to be technically skilled at surgery AND robotics AND software development in addition to all the regular CEO stuff like managing people and projects and financial oversight etc. etc.? What about the board? How many surgeons do you need on a ten-person board? Is it ten? Zero? How many robotics specialists? Accountants? Lawyers? If it’s zero, how do we communicate the important surgical stuff to them in a way that they will understand and feel confident being accountable for? If it’s all ten, where do we find these people who have technical expertise across so many different – and divergent – factors? Don’t forget that you can always supplement with consultants and stuff. No matter what path you choose, there are trade-offs that affect decision-making conditions.