Becoming a business technology leader

¶ … Business Technology Leader

The development of the necessary background, experience, technical, academic and experiential knowledge to excel as a successful business technology leader needs to start with an honest assessment of ones' innate strengths on the one hand, and their passions on the other. At the intersection of passion and innate strength or talent is where business technology leaders have the greatest probability of success.

Preparation for Being a Business Technology Leader

The one attribute that all successful business technology leaders share is the ability to engender and grow trust through integrity (Lundberg, 6). The establishing, nurturing and growing of trust and credibility is critical for any leader, in any industry, yet is even more critical in rapidly changing high tech industries (Maccoby, 65-67). Ethics must be the foundation of any business technology leaders' career if it is to withstand the test of time and the many conflicts that arise in managing rapid change both technologically and at an interpersonal level. Secondly, technical expertise and the ability to lead from the standpoint is critical. Both academic and experiential learning contribute to the most successful business technology leaders excelling in this area (Soat, 30). Researchers are unanimous that business technology leaders must become just as conversant and have expertise in business processes as they are in traditional Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Business Process Management (BPM) as the means of attaining higher performance through redesigning and streamlining processes is critical. The mandate is clear that any effective business technology leader must focus on a process-based expertise and knowledge of their businesses if they are to be successful (Andriole, 69). Combining this process-centric expertise with the ability to manage a workforce virtually (Hunsaker, Hunsaker, 89) is also essential as every business technology leader in the 21st century will have to manage geographically distributed workforces. In terms of personal attributes, business technology leaders must also be able to sustain momentum to objectives, and if this means pushing beyond their own comfort zone, they must find that level of intensity in themselves (Lundberg, 6). Intensity for accomplishing objectives together and a passion for both the businesses they work for and making the processes that comprise them as efficient as possible are the most potent attributes of successful leaders.

Companies Selected and Rejected