共享题干题【2016年真题】With cloud, mobility, big data and consumerization, companies are in even greater need of technology talent than they were in the late 1990s, and that talent is in even shorter supply.  Computer science enrollments are at an all-time low; baby-boomer workers are retiring and  taking all of that legacy systems knowledge with them; and Silicon Valley is hot again.  Would that young, brilliant developer rather join the next Zynga or upgrade the payroll  systems at your insurance company?
 Two weeks ago, I asked the IT executive readership of my weekly newsletter, The  Heller Report, to answer the question: If you had a magic wand, which one talent problem  would you solve? Responses poured in and addressed challenges around recruiting,  developing leaders, and retaining the talent that they currently have. But more than 70  percent of readers would use their magic wand to do only one thing: give business skills to  their technologists. Their people, they worry, are so narrowly focused on the technology that  they fail to see the forest for the trees. They do not understand the business context of their  technology work, nor can they have meaningful discussions with the leaders of the business  areas about their technology support.
 This lack of business-savvy technology talent is a serious problem for every company  that relies on technology to exist (which is, of course, every company). Those beautifully  “blended executives,” who can talk technology in one meeting and can talk business in  another, are rare birds. Yet with technology moving directly into the revenue stream of your  company, you need them, and your need is only going to increase.
 One option is to spend all of your time and money on recruiting blended executives  from the outside. You will be in heated competition with every other company in your  market, and if your recruiting function is not a competitive weapon for you, you will find  yourself in a losing battle. You would be much better off growing your own. Here are some  ideas:
 Build a rotational program. Encourage your head of human resources to work with your  CIO and a few of your other business leaders to build a program that rotates IT people into  different functions of the business. This kind of program is not easy, with your CIO having  to survive without a trusted IT leader for a period of time, but the long-term result of a good  rotational program can be tremendous. It may well be worth the investment.
 Involve your business leaders. If a rotational program is too much to take on right  now, build a leadership development program for IT that involves your business executives.  Encourage your CIO to invite the heads of your major business units to meet regularly with  the senior IT team to educate them on their business area. And be sure that you, CFO, are  spending enough time with IT. Use that interaction to chip away at the long-standing wall  that often exists between the business and IT.
 Embed your IT people in the business. By now, your CIO should have restructured  the IT organization so that each major business or functional area has a dedicated IT leader.  These positions are called “business relationship executives，” portfolio CIOs, or customer  relationship managers, and they often report both to the CIO and to a functional or P&L  leader. The more time they spend in “the business,” the more they learn skills beyond IT, and  the more valuable they become to you over time. You know you are on the right track when  you walk into a business unit meeting, and from the dialogue taking place, you cannot easily  distinguish the IT person from everyone else.