Bill Gates Has IT Wrong!

Bill Gates has got IT wrong! At least, Bill Gates is dangerously half-right, in telling us that IT skills are undervalued.

IT skills are obviously important, but the challenge in business and government organisations is not the technology itself, but how to use it usefully.

Point & cllick is not where it ends, it's where it begins.

When Bill Gates went before government and business leaders in Edinburgh he gave us a Christmas present of the great man's thoughts on the skills you need to succeed in business. Was he right? It seems that everyone thinks so, judging by the enthusiastic support he received from his audience, and responses received on the BBC website.

According to Mr Gates, what we need to do, to impact productivity and profit, and enhance value and satisfaction in business life (if not life itself), is to acquire these IT skills.

But according to the 500 UK business leaders surveyed by Microsoft earlier this year, the things we need first and foremost are skills such as team working, interpersonal skills, initiative, verbal communication and analysing & problem-solving. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Microsoft survey concluded: computer knowledge 'undervalued'.

This is what Bill Gates himself said about software innovation:
"Software innovation, like almost every other innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs".

Which points to the conclusion that, in order to get innovative software products, the pre-eminent skills needed are things like team working, interpersonal skills, initiative, verbal communication and analysing & problem-solving!

Another group of senior executives who also seem to disagree with Mr Gates are the 650 senior executives surveyed in the 2007 survey of Technology Issues for Financial Executives. They said that Joining Up Business and IT (or Business-IT Alignment as they call it), is the paramount issue. Training Staff in New IT Skills, in fact, comes in at No. 16 on the list.

What's more important for these executives, below the No. 1 issue of joined-up Business-IT, are things like getting dialogue between Business and IT, improving business processes, prioritising IT investments, and achieving the expected benefits from IT.

Interestingly, at No. 14 in the Top 20, just ahead of Training Staff in New IT Skills, is Educating Senior Management on the Value of IT. So the point and click stuff, while important, is not where it's at for these business leaders.

The reason why Bill Gates is dangerously half right is that there is nothing more deceiving, nothing more likely to get our focus wrong and prevent us from winning, than a half-truth. If, for example, a business spends money on the latest version of a software product or business system and it fails to satisfy (and the majority do fail to satisfy), what is likely to have gone wrong?

The operation was successful (we got the technology right), but the patient died. There are three fundamentals that are likely to have gone wrong but which must, imperatively, be got right for business if not society itself, to harness the true value of IT. And it's not rocket science. These three fundamentals are:
- people
- organisation
- management.

Which may have resonance for Aussies & Kiwis as it give us POM!
Never mind about enhanced IT skills. First get the POM right in thinking about and developing and acquiring IT. Then productivity and profit, together with enhanced value and satisfaction in business life, is more likely to follow.

What do you think; has Bill Gates got IT wrong?