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A good CIO needs to know the Scotty Principle

by Tris Hussey on July 3rd, 2008

I had a good chuckle over this article in CIO about why IT might think their CIO is clueless.  This point clicked with me, because I think it makes a pretty interesting point: to be a good CIO you have to grok geek culture:

8. The CIO collaborates to death.
Whether it is the character flaw of being indecisive or some middle-school notion of democracy, you are in charge. Collaboration is critical, but you also need to make the right decision at the right time. Collaborate like Captain Kirk. "Spock?" "Bones?" He gets opinions from his experts but there is never any question about who will make the final decision. And, if you never watched Star Trek then you shouldn’t even be a CIO. Source: 9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

I think to really lead geeks well you need to have watched the shows we watched, read the books (and comics) we read, movies we watched … you have to know where we’re coming from.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we’ve been heavily influenced by Roddenberry, Heinlein, Asimov.  They have helped us form and conceive of the world around us.

To be able to relate to geeks, developers, sys admins, etc. you have to know this stuff.   Really you need to grok it.

But most of all you need to know the Scotty Principle.

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