BobbySue was a top performer. She had been well groomed for management and knew how to run an effective team. When her manager moved on, BobbySue was promoted to backfill his old position. A few months later BobbySue found herself looking for a new job. What happened?

BobbySue had over a decade of experience working on the FooSniblette application. She started out on the FooSniblette helpdesk several companies ago and had now worked herself up to the rank of senior-whiz-bang-all-knowing FooSniblette Certified Professional.  She possessed a wealth of experience understanding the esoteric aspects of the FooSniblette system and was a top performer. She had always done a great job, so when her manager took on a new position heading up a field service group, BobbySue was promoted to backfill his old position. Her old manager had spent a lot of time grooming BobbySue for managing the team and she had read all the latest management books on how to run an effective team. A few months later BobbySue found herself looking for a new job.

What BobbySue didn’t have was much exposure to anything outside of the FooSniblett area. Her whole career had been so FooSniblette centric that she was unable to effectively contribute to the larger organizational strategy. She lacked the flexibility required to connect the dots across some of the other functional areas she needed to collaborate with. She only knew one piece of the puzzle. 

When it comes to technical leadership should Breadth of experience be given consideration over Depth of experience?  

Given the huge amount of complexity in IT infrastructure today, it is virtually impossible for an individual to “do it all” for anything but the smallest environments.  The resulting super skill set specialization trend in the industry has translated to a broad knowledge base being somewhat undervalued these days. When this occurs it comes with a hefty unseen price tag that many organizations may not recognize. There are a gazillion examples where having a great deal of technical depth in a particular area is absolutely required. However, when you start talking about enterprise applications, staffing which relies almost exclusively on depth may not yield the long term results intended.  

Most folks get their first taste of the IT world doing some manner of end user support. For individuals doing desktop support, having a narrowly focused skill set is usually a recipe for disaster. The desktop techs need to be quick on their feet and know a little bit about a whole lot of stuff or they face a growing level of frustration and distain from those they support.  

As technologists begin moving up in their career, folks usually required to concentrate on a particular niche area either out of interest or necessity or, if you are lucky enough, both. A couple years down the road they are strongly trending towards one discipline or another. By the time they are a senior-whiz-bang-certified-professional like BobbySue was, they are tightly focused on one or two specific subjects that they intimately know backwards, forwards and upside down. They are the seasoned guru in that particular area, a much needed and highly respected individual that everyone seeks out in times of crisis. Because of this fact, they are often considered for a leadership slot when one opens up, almost by default.  

In the world of enterprise applications there are of course differences in the purpose, user base, data models and user interfaces between an HRMS, ERP, PLM, CRMS, or other popular three-letter and four-letter applications. A company absolutely must have one or two guru level specialists in a given area to run the business. However if the specialization factor is given too much weight from a hiring perspective and there hasn’t been much cross pollination between groups, it becomes harder and harder to see anything beyond their silo. Continuing with normal IT career progression, the senior technical expert eventually transitions into a management slot for that application silo.  

Even if the new leader doesn’t shoot him or herself in the foot as a result of becoming solely focused on their application silo, others will likely do it for him, by typecasting the individual in that role.  When for whatever reason the new leader doesn’t work out, the typical knee-jerk reaction from management is to go out and hire a new manager with specific experience in that business space with that specific application.  The good news is that the organization gets some much needed fresh blood. The bad news is that it is most likely from the same limited perspective as the person they are replacing.   

In a nutshell the tactical need to fill the open position seems to take precedent over the more strategic needs of the IT organization. Eventually the company runs into a problem, because at some point the end to end process needs to be redesigned, the apps are going to share data with each other, or the decision is made to replace the application with a completely different tool suite. 

A leader that has “grown up” in a specific discipline won’t be adequately equipped to work on a broader corporate strategy. They will lack the level of insight, creativity and collaboration required to connect the dots at the broader tactical and strategic level.  While the leader is struggling to get a handle on the new reality themselves, the rest of the staff flounders, morale drops and things start to unravel. Time to call in the consultants for an extended stay.  Cha-Ching! 

Best practices like ITIL attempt to address some of the issues of specialized skills and experience by stressing the importance of service design and such, but the organizational structure to support it is key breeding ground for head count bloat and loss of corporate agility.  

For an IT organization to be the most effective, anyone that has demonstrated good leadership potential and has developed sufficient experience in one enterprise area should be highly encouraged to transition into another area "cold turkey". The obvious downside of this is ramp up time for the employee, but the long term agility and flexibility an IT organization gains from this provides huge benefit to the company. HOWEVER, the company needs to have this practice be well known, for otherwise the newly transported person will quickly be considered a fish out of water, have no acceptance from his new team, and will be considered a low performer by his management. 

The key set of differences in the enterprise space is a broad range of experience required at the leadership level to paint the picture and effectively stitch the IT infrastructure together. An IT leader needs to think in terms of a strategy, design, integration, transition, support broader than their domain. This is hard to do if all you have ever known is one specific application suite. Those are the fundamental challenges at the leadership level. The specifics of the applications themselves and the needs and care-abouts of the client base aren’t rocket science to learn. 

So next time you need to fill an open leadership slot stop to think about what you are really hoping to achieve. Do you want a technical leader that is narrowly focused on a specific, but valuable role, or do you want to develop a long term leader that is better equipped to handle several roles on the organization beyond their specific vertical.  For my money, hiring someone with a broad range of experience has always provided more value than someone with deep understanding of a specific area.