Value technical staff and be considered competitive
-Alistair Gordon Technical specialists such as engineers, software developers, scientists or economists are expensive to hire and require great effort to retain. And despite the expense and effort, often they don’t create the value or innovation that business owners expect. Our organisation has been coaching technical specialists for 10 years. I am still surprised by how much money is spent on the hire of technical specialists, and once they are hired, how little attention is paid to their performance. In an organisation that takes a “hire and forget” approach to these specialist roles, innovation is challenging, not least because the process to pitch and adopt new ideas will be long, impractical, and frustratingly opaque. On one side, specialists don’t know how to pitch, network or commercialise ideas. On the executive side, ideas that aren’t well pitched, with clear commercial benefit, are blocked before they get anywhere near the executive suite. Want to improve competitiveness in an organisation? Challenge each of its experts to master broader business effectiveness, not just technical expertise – to become a “master expert”. But to make innovation reliable and consistent, organisations must reframe their goals for specialist training, development, manager expectations, expert career paths and appraisals, with all supporting the goal of mastery. Experts don’t have their commercial skills developed, but they should Why such a radical change? It’s because experts, to date, have not had the development they need. Consider the career of a manager – not a technical specialist, but a high-performing people leader. They are appraised and promoted on their ability to achieve commercial goals, to communicate strategy and manage upward. From the first days of their career, their development, career ladder, appraisals, and mentoring all challenge them to master business and relationship skills. In other words, they are trained and supported to […]