CNBC Business | EUROTYPES: The tech geek

EUROTYPES: The tech geek

Problem career shifts

Mark Jones finds that for all your potential talents, getting respect and recognition in a new, senior role can often prove trickier than it seems

Nice office. Don’t miss the bunker, then, Tommy?” Tom took his hands off the keyboard and folded his arms. “Sure, it’s nice to have a bit more light, Niall.”

He waited while Niall snooped around checking the shelves and furniture. “You did well, mister. A few people on the Leadership Team had their eyes on this place.” Including you, Tom thought. “Very restrained tastes you have, I must say.”

“Expecting Game Boys and Lara Croft posters there were you Niall?” Tom’s voice was joking but he kept his arms crossed and his gaze sardonic. Niall touched the frame of an elegant black and white print of a barren west Ireland landscape. “You know, who would guess you’d come up from IT?” Or from a farm in Mayo, you’re thinking, aren’t you? Tom didn’t say that one out loud.

Everyone recognised that the IT function was central to the company’s success. The MD said so, the board agreed heartily, the lads on the sales floor were noisy in their congratulations when it was announced Tom had made the board. “It’s a recognition of the stunning contribution Tommy’s team has made to the bottom line,” the MD said at the company meeting. “And we’re surely going to see him contributing much more at a strategic level in his new role.”

There was just a little bit too much emphasis on that “surely”. The truth was, the MD hadn’t asked Tom very much about his “strategic vision” when he’d promoted him. And in board meetings he’d say things like: “Tell us if all this brainstorming blue-sky stuff is boring you, Tommy.”

When it came round to his turn to deliver his report he sensed the slight but collective slump that went around the table. He wasn’t surprised. He’d seen Niall’s email asking whether it was really necessary to devote a part of the monthly board to “health-factor stuff like printers and servers”. You couldn’t hide much from an IT guy.

In fact, Tom loved the strategic side of the business. He relished the talk of bold expansion plans, takeover targets, organic growth plans. And he knew how to make them happen: who was flaky, who had a grip on things, where the resources needed to be focused, where they could slim down.

This was his problem: he just wasn’t very good at saying these things out loud. All the years he’d spent hunched over a screen, quietly making his presence felt, weren’t the best training for the swagger and the gesture-making of the boardroom. He knew people like Niall thought he was criticising them with his silence. Little did he know, Tom hugely admired people like Niall who had an opinion on everything, who could blarney their way out of any corner. It didn’t matter that 70% of what they said was balls. In Tom’s experience, 70% of what everyone said in corporate life was balls.

“So let me guess, Niall, you’re here to chat through the segmentation programme? Big programme. Big wins if we get it right.” Niall looked furtive and felt in his jacket pocket. “Actually, no, it’s this bloody thing”. Tom knew what this bloody thing was. “I just connected it to the dock and it went dead. I know it’s not exactly company business.”

“Give it here, Niall.” Tom took the iPod, reset it in five deft manoeuvres and returned it. “You can learn how to do that yourself in two minutes from the Apple site, you know.”

Niall squeezed him hard on the shoulder. “Sure I can, Tommy. But I thought you’d like to be kept in touch with your roots, like”.

Tom closed the door behind Niall. He opened a extracted a book from his desk: The Confidence Trick: from Geek to Leader in 30 Days. He went back to the chapter: “Get them to treat you as you are, not as you were”. That one needed re-reading.