Is technology a profession? I hope so.

From May 2025

As previously posted, I chatted with a scholar from the Naval War College on whether the model for civil-military relations (grounded in professional) described in Samuel Huntington’s book “The Soldier and the State” should inform the business-IT interface. He replied: (a) enterprise technology doesn’t meet Huntington’s standard as a profession, (b) Huntington may have urged too much deference to military officers and (c) Feaver, Cohen and Rover might have additional useful insights.

This was very helpful. A few thoughts on my part:

1. Huntington’s definition of professionalism may be overly formulaic. The best technologists have an ethos of responsibility — this is something we only need more of. And I might ask: how much does corporateness matter? Are professional standards boards really that effective, given the number of shady doctors and lawyers out there? Perhaps reputation (which is very important in the technology) is a better guard against malfeasance than bureaucracy? Put another way, according Huntington’s definition, we cannot be professionals because there is no corporate body for the profession of management consulting. (And that’s probably a good thing, given that parochial or ideological interests can capture formal professional bodies.)

2. Rover implicitly makes and argument for agile over waterfall. He points out that aligning military strategy with policy (or grand strategy) is hard, especially in a dynamic environment. Policy-makers constantly find out that achieving some military objective will require more time and effort than estimated or that rules of engagement have more implications than expected. Ideally you solve this not by changing the balance of power, but with shorter decision cycles. When events prove an agree-on plan unworkable military and civilian (or business and technology) leaders should reconvene to adjust the plan, given the most recent information. You could even call the reconvening a QBR.

3. Feaver uses principle-agent theory to analyze civil-military relations. Military officers may not have the same incentives as civilian policymakers. They may want fancier equipment, larger budgets, fewer casualties and looser rules of engagement than civilian policymakers would prefer. You saw a great example of this during the 1990s when the Pentagon told the Clinton administration that it would take months to get helicopters to the Balkans – senior officers were just unenthusiastic about US involvement in that conflict so they sandbagged the timelines. Feaver would say that as agents they were “shrinking” instead of “working” for their principals who represented the American electorate. Business leaders often suspect technology officers of shirking: inflating budgets, extending timelines, or investing in neat technologies rather than business impact. Feaver argues that civilians must closely monitor the military chain of command, but also acknowledges that monitoring can be counter-productive past a point – intrusive monitoring can distract and demoralize the monitored.

4. Eliot Cohen (whose wonderful book Supreme Command I read years ago) argues that the dialog between civilian policy makers and military officers must be an unequal one. They should engage in open candid debate, but the civilians, as representatives of the electorate, must hold the trump card on issues of policy and strategy. So too in debates between the CEO and technology officers – the CEO represents the board and shareholders; he must interpret their willingness to invest; to defer returns or to accept risk. But good CEOs, like good Presidents, must both challenge military logic and while also accepting the limits of personal expertise. I expect General McClellan assured Lincoln he was provide the best possible military advice when he advocated caution and passivity in prosecuting the Civil War. Ultimately, Lincoln figured out that much better military advice was on offer from Grant and Sherman.

5. I think I misinterpreted (or perhaps interpreted too narrowly) Huntington’s definition of subjective control of the military. I think it meant a highly politicized military. It could also mean a military that reflects the political values of the society around it. The Soviet Union sought to achieve this by inserting party cadres into military leadership. More constructively, the United States seeks to achieve a form of subjective control by having folks like Charlie Lewis teach civics at West Point. Formal instructions aside, if military officers understand and believe in the Constitution, they will less likely subvert it. Executive teams seek subjective control of the technology organization by hiring technology officers whose values and priorities mirror those of the broader organization. You could also argue that stock options (and other enterprise performance-based compensation) is a form on subjective control in seeking to align tech officers objectives with those of the broader organizations.

6. There are actually three models for aligning policymakers and military leaders (or business leaders and tech officers): objective, subjective and close monitoring, with good tech organizations requiring a comgination of objective and subjective methods.

• Tech officers should advocate for enterprise technology as a profession. They should insist their people think of themselves as professionals bound by a more inspiring ethos than pure self-interest. (Many technologists already think this way.) And they should be unashamed in reminding business leaders that they possess specialist knowledge and expertise that’s essential to making good decisions in their domain.

• Business leaders and tech officers needs to collaborate in building a one-team, one-fight mindset. Even if enterprise technology is a distinct profession, enterprise technologists apply their professional expertise in the service of an institution with objectives and values. Business leaders must emphasize to their team that they consider technologists to be first-class citizens of the enterprise.

• Tech officers should give their unvarnished “best military advice” to business leaders in setting strategy. And business leaders must engage in Cohen’s unequal dialogue, challenging tech officers’ assumptions in order to land on decisions that align technology strategy with broad business strategy. Needless to say, this dialog cannot happen just once a year at budget time – it requires constant interaction through the year as conditions change and new conditions arise.

• Business leaders should monitor outcomes, rather than the inner workings of the technology organization. They should care about cost per unit of service, not how many people are in high-cost versus low-cost locations – that is for technology officers to optimize. Business leaders should demand that tech officers have transparency into and monitor their own functions.