Techie in the Businessland

A week ago, at the official beginning of the Fall season, I had the chance to attend a managers' meeting called by our VP, a charming and funny individual with a strong business acumen, a deep sense of humour and a ton of ideas that do not let him sleep well. After he presented us the quarterly results (which, as usual, are good but could be better), asked us to be part of a team exercise. 

To be more precise, he split us in four working groups, business and IT managers mingled together, and asked us to do a bit of brainstorming and accommodate a simple request: Provide three ideas to make the business grow in this highly competitive market of media and advertisement.

The group exercise that followed offered me the chance to witness first-hand how the business managers think, i.e. measure and cut. Sometimes in the IT world , we are bound to forget that our fancy state of the art tools and apps are totally useless without people to sell them and people to buy or simply consume them. Deep down in the engines’ room you tend to ignore what it takes for the people on the deck to keep the boat afloat and on the right direction.

I personally had a humbling experience during the group exercise: I realized that it is not an easy task to come up with bright, unique, progressive ideas that could make our business soar. And I'm not even near to accomplish that. It takes a different thinking, special abilities, knowledge of the market behaviours, training, experience, and last but not least, a committed team to become a successful organization and stay the course.