Technologists with business savvy or business people with technical savvy?

Today’s software and technology industry is huge, and many companies in it were started by techies who got tired of working for others and had an idea of ​​their own. But should technologists also start taking leadership of non-tech companies? After all, digital is the future of business for everyone, right?

Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and founder of Netscape, who was one of the first to put the World Wide Web on the map, says that more companies are better off being run by technologists. “Find the smartest technologist in the company and make them CEO,” he advises in a recent McKinsey interview.

The problem is, tech-savvy people don’t usually hold top leadership positions—they’re often working behind the scenes. And he explains, “There are only a handful of very smart engineers.” “The problem is that in many large companies, the real technologists are not the core people of the company. They are not treated as first-class citizens.”

Tesla, the witness, “is run by a technologist who has figured out everything and knows how to make a self-driving electric car,” Andresen explained. “The big car companies are run by people with classical business training who are not naturally techies.”

At Tesla, he continues, “The engineers who work on self-driving cars are the most important people.” “Elon talks about them all the time, talks to them all the time, and they’re basically the leaders of the company. Not the people who work on that stuff at traditional automakers. They are still in this kind of backyard. The same people who ran the business for 40 years are now in charge.

Should the technologists dominate major companies, as Andreessen suggests, or should things remain in the hands of business-oriented individuals who at least understand the power of technology? Industry leaders I’ve spoken to over the past several months about this question agree that technology savvy is now part of leadership roles, but business savvy is just as important.

“You don’t need to know how to code—even more so—but technology literacy is now a sought-after management skill,” says Linda Dupree, entrepreneur and former CEO of NCSolutions. “Keeping pace with new technologies and applications is critical. Start by acquiring the technology skills necessary to excel in your current role. Then commit to learning about machine learning, artificial intelligence, and visualization and the new ways you can deploy these skills for organizational growth and competitive advantage.”

Digital transformation is “changing the technology needs of enterprises, and leaders must keep up or fall behind,” said AirSlate CEO and Founder Boria Shaknovich. “This does not mean that corporate leaders must now become IT wizards, but that they must harness the potential of their employees to become citizen builders. Enterprises have the opportunity to work faster and smarter by being led by the non-IT staff they already have.

“These disruptive and turbulent times require leaders to be more flexible, responsive and digitally savvy than ever before,” said Dustin Grosse, chief marketing and strategy officer, Nitex. “Competition is driving companies to digitally transform how they work with more efficiency, less routine, repetitive and busy work. A deep business understanding of how to streamline work is key to achieving true digital transformation and transforming the most traditional manual waste disposal processes into digital waste disposal processes.”

According to Shaknovich, aspiring and current leaders need to be smart about how they lead their companies in this era of intense digital transformation. “Software solutions, data and analytics, AI—these are all tools that leaders need to leverage to expand their company’s business potential.”

Still, with tech savvy people, those who want to lead “must be very collaborative and willing to give feedback,” Shaknovich says. This is a role that can be taken on by business professionals or technologists who are ready to lead their businesses from a strategic perspective. “Strong leaders are especially committed to breaking down important priority silos and emphasizing cross-functional efforts as remote work and distributed teams become more commonplace. Leaders must be willing to hear from a variety of voices—employees, managers, peers, board members, customers—and success depends on the opinions of diverse people and To establish a culture where perspectives flow from understood strategies.

People seeking leadership roles, regardless of background, “need to be prepared,” Andresen pointed out in the McKinsey interview. “I always do sessions with big companies where I spend all my time [about crypto and blockchain and Web3]. Everyone around the conference room looked increasingly suspicious. They are all trying to fix each other. Are they going to feel stupid if they are the ones expressing happiness when everyone else thinks they are stupid? I would have thought that now many big companies would be more open to these new ideas. But there’s something in their culture, there’s something in the structure of how these companies are created.

The key is to “maintain the student mindset even when you’re winning,” says Gross. “It’s not easy and successful companies often have to fight the negativity that comes with success. There’s no time to rest when you’re quickly copied and improved by competitors. Learn to be a constructive and true change leader within your own team and within your team and company.”