IN A NUTSHELL...
Every great tech-heavy business has been built by commercially- and technologically-minded people working together. In fact, synergy between entrepreneurial business people and ingenious tech folk is arguably the force that’s built the modern world: from iPhones to jet airliners, from MRI scanners to air conditioners, from skyscrapers to vacuum cleaners. The biggest tech-giants to the humblest mom-and-pop suppliers all depend on a balance between commercial and technical mindsets.
But the fact is that commercial and technical people sometimes drive each other nuts. They all too easily fall into the trap of stereotyping each other: “Suits are like this” & “Geeks are like that”. Communication breaks down and the business suffers.
When managers don’t listen to engineers, it can lead to product recalls, customer losses, shredded reputations, and even disasters. When engineers don’t listen to commercial people, it can lead to missed opportunities and the failure of once-great businesses.
And of course, each side blames the other, while you act as referee and then try to explain to the board why competitors are racing ahead. You’re caught in the Suits & Geeks trap.
Many attempts a consultant might recommend fail because they kid themselves that you can make one tribe think and act like the other. You try to make commercial teams understand the engineers and they get impatient with the jargon and the detail. You try to get engineers to be like marketers and you get eye- rolling, lip-service commitments and you drive their tinkering underground.
You might be tempted to try team-building, personality tests, project management software and business school courses. But while they all seem a good idea at the time – and they might plausibly be part of a solution – they never quite do the trick.
You’re trying to solve the problem but what you really need to do is dissolve it.
That means stopping attempts to force or inadvertently manipulate square pegs into round holes, and finding the natural synergy that is always there, waiting to be re-established.
And that’s the good news: We know that commercial people and engineers can collaborate magnificently: because that’s what built the modern world. You’ve also probably experienced times when such collaboration happened in your own career. So it can happen again.
Here's an overview of the ideas covered in The Suits & Geeks Trap. Download the book for free.
THE IDEA IN PRACTICE
- 1Appeal to the wildly different mindsets of engineers and business managers. Business people need technology to make money. Engineers need money to make technology.
- 2Don’t try and change people’s motivations. You can’t motivate people – they’re already motivated. Appeal to what they’re already interested in. Avoid their existing turn-offs.
- 3Stop pursuing ‘solutions’ that actually make things worse. The tools consultants use can exacerbate the problem and tighten the trap, because they often make people feel pushed or patronised. And people are very creative in how they resist being pushed.
- 4Sort out your top team relationships. Any Suit v Geek tensions on the leadership team will be reflected in ‘proxy battles’ around the rest of the organization.
- 5Don’t make people sing ‘Kumbaya’. It’s a guaranteed recipe for cynicism.
- 6Start with what works. Turn exceptions into interventions. Where do your supposed ‘Suits’ and ‘Geeks’ work well together? Where do people act counter to the stereotype (it might be at work, it might be outside work. Either way it can be leverage). By the way, Start With What Works is the title of one of my books.
- 7Clarify incentives. Are you inadvertently rewarding the behaviours that feed into Suit v. Geek games and therefore drive Doom Loops?
- 8Coach both sides on their individual effectiveness. Both groups have legitimate challenges (e.g. perfectionism and procrastination among engineers and professionals, and bringing bad news and influencing across boundaries for business development). There’s no substitute for interactive help from the right kind of coach.
- 9Make sure you’re not enabling destructive behaviour. If you reward or promote people who like to play stupid Suits versus Geeks games, you send a far more powerful signal than any workshop or speech at an all-hands meeting about stopping the games.
- 10Improve relationships by working together on substantive tasks rather than relying on workshops. Workshops – unless properly embedded – always run the risk of being forgotten as soon as people get back to their inbox. Keep it real.
If you’re a leader who feels like your organization is caught in a trap, this is your escape plan.
These and other measures, explained in the book, will get your commercial and technical people to stop driving each other nuts so that they can get on with delivering results.
And then they won’t be driving you nuts either!
Download your copy of The Suits & Geeks Trap, and release the brakes on growth.