The Leadership dilemma - A survey

We surveyed 75 leaders and executives

Technology leaders face many challenges. In my technology career, I have often seen repeating ones that can be all be summed up into the bucket of “leadership dilemma”. This article explains some of these challenges and correlates the results with a recent survey of leaders.

Let us understand the difference between a problem and a dilemma. Problems can usually be solved with a specific solution. Dilemmas, on the other hand, do not present a clear solution. They need to be worked on over time towards a resolution. A technology leader faces multiple challenges, and all these contribute to the leadership dilemma.

We surveyed leaders on 4 main challenges. These challenges were listed as

• Increasing one’s performance
• Doing more with less resources
• Working with Matrixed organizations
• Reorganization challenges

Leaders could select multiple issues from whatever they have faced or currently face. The results show up in the graph in figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Results of leadership dilemma survey

Performance increase in one’s job is linked to the technology area itself. The question that we asked people to check was if they ever faced or currently face issues with was

Increasing your performance. You have a challenge of staying current with changing technology and continue to perform at your job

75% of the respondents indicated that they faced this challenge. If one is a leader in an area where the rate of change is relatively slow, then after one is a master in the field the person just needs to keep up with incremental changes. Technology however is an area that changes rapidly. In my personal experience when I started working, one of my challenges was how to write programs that used minimum memory resources in a computer. The maximum memory in personal computers back then was 64 Kilobytes. Today we carry a smart phone in our pockets which has a memory which is a million times of that PC. 

There have been rapid changes in every aspect of technology. A leader’s challenge is to keep abreast with these changes around her. The leader is always thinking about how to increase one’s performance while technology is changing around them. Personal bandwidth is always in short supply.

We also asked respondents to rate the importance of this challenge that they face between 1 (least important) to 5 (most important) to their job. 88.5% responded with a 3 or higher. This is one aspect of a leader’s dilemma.

Doing more with less shows up in fields outside of technology, however it has a unique flavor for a technology leader. As technology changes rapidly, one needs to support old technology as well as continue to develop new ones. However, the leader is not getting new investments for these. He has to manage with the resource constraints and address all aspects of new delivery as he continues to sustain old deliveries. The reason that start-ups are created and ventured funded is an aspect of this. Established companies and technologies are usually not able to garner additional investment and this rapid growth is managed elsewhere. We asked the leaders to check the following is they faced it.

Doing more with less. You need to innovate as well as sustain existing levels with the budget you have

Over 80% of the respondents who selected this rated this as 3 or higher challenge.

Figure 2: Results of importance of challenges in survey

Matrixed Organizations is somewhat related to the first challenge. Since technology has changed rapidly, not everyone is able to keep up with the rapid changes in every aspect. This has resulted in various specializations. Most technology teams are built around different specializations instead of building a delivery team with all specializations. The technology leader therefore needs to leverage resources and deliveries from different teams to achieve their goals. This has resulted in matrix management without direct authority over specific resources outside of one’s team. We asked leaders if they experienced the following

Matrixed organizations. You need to leverage resources from different teams and manage them without direct authority

74% of the leaders who checked this rated it 3 or higher in importance.