illustration by James Gulliver-Hancock
Techie Charm School
The day of the nerdy tech guy may be past at Kimberly-Clark, which recently ran a finishing school of sorts to teach its IT team the finer points of corporate interaction. The two-day seminar was the culmination of an IT reshuffle that started about a year ago in which the company outsourced 80% of its tech needs. The 800 or so surviving code crunchers and software specialists were handed a new job description: Bring IT knowhow to business problems. There were pitfalls aplenty. The techies had to learn to think strategically and speak a foreign language: jargon-free English.
At first, “attrition was high,” says CIO Ramon Baez, but most made the transition. The July seminar, including tips on relationship building, topped off the training. Baez says his newly burnished tech team is solving shipping problems and forging ties with retailers. And dressing better. “Some days they even wear sport jackets,” he says.
