Anthony Lauder

I am a geek, learning how to speak the language of CEOs.

CEOs don't care about "geek speak". We can talk until we are blue in the face about "agile methods" and "technical architecture" but it will go in one ear and out the other. Techno-babble is a foreign language to most business people - and even if they could speak it, much of what they hear will seem pretty irrelevant to them.

All the recent talk about the benefits of "going agile" has made the technical folks get very giddy (witness the "under the radar" adoption of XP at many companies) but hasn't had much impact higher up in the business. Lot of the Agile methodologies (Scrum, DSDM, Lean) need buy-in higher up. Ideally, at the CEO level. How do we get that buy-in? Certainly not by expecting the CEO to understand or be impressed by techno-babble.

If the CEOs aren't going to learn our language, then we have to learn theirs. We need to discover how senior executives work, how they think, and what compels them to action. We need to get better at communicating the real business (rather than technical) benefits that agile methodologies offer.

This is my mission: to learn to speak the foreign language that CEOs speak. To be able to express things in terms of their concerns. To see the benefits of agile from the perspective of senior executives. That is, to focus on addressing the needs of the business rather than the whims of the technologists.

I am devoting the next year of my life to achieving this. My progress will be unraveled on my website and blog. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Contact:

I am happy to receive email: anthony (at) anthonylauder (dot) com

Here is my personal homepage: http://www.anthonylauder.com

Here is my blog: http://anthonylauder.blogspot.com

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