Are Technical Skills More Important Than Business Acumen?

Are technical skills more important than business knowledge? Can one person know both their technical skill and enough business knowledge to create a long lasting company beyond the entrepreneur’s career? It can be done, having a wealth of knowledge in those two categories, however, it is not recommended. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many of those hours can be spent working in and on your company. The answer is to leverage yourself in order to elevate your company. Yet, this is the last thing a technical entrepreneur thinks of when they open their practice.

While many professions within the service industry have this problem, one that stands out is in the design professions. Design professions can range from graphic design to website design to creating applications for other businesses, to commissioned artists. Whatever the profession, the same problems occur.

The Mindset of A Technical Entrepreneur

When interviewing design service firms and how they view business and finance, many have said that

“it is about the work, not the money.”

Or that,

“it is about helping the community, not making a profit.”

While these are noble and great efforts, if the company suffers financially because of too many of these types of projects, that hurts both the community and the company. The company cannot continue because of the lack of money and the community cannot continue to grow and prosper with that particular company’s help.

Technical skills are very important. Technical skills create the service that design firms provide. Without these skills and technicians to perform these tasks, the company would not exist. However, take a step back, and imagine yourself as an entrepreneur in the design profession. You know that you need two specific skill-sets to be successful in your field. They are the technical skills and business skills. If you have the technical skills, the next component, as the business owner, would be to have the business skills. Yet, this is where the learning seems to stop and the gap begins.

In most cases, it does not make sense to try and know everything about both skill-sets.

What does make sense is to leverage yourself by hiring a team who has specific skills within the technical and business skill-sets that you have defined. This is where design firms break down. The firm may hire the right technicians to complete the projects, yet the company suffers because of its structure or lack of a structure. Another area where they run into trouble can be when the word-of-mouth marketing and repeat clients slows or stops altogether due to a slowing economy. The company may have become dependant on its clients in order to survive! This mindset creates a “rat race mentality” in which you must chase after clients and projects in order to stay alive. This is not a sustainable way to run a company!

Which Skill-Set is Stronger In You?

The idea is to know where you want to work: in or on your company. Focus on seeing the two sides of your company and choose where you want to work and go from there. From there, build a team around you to fill in the other aspects of both defined skill-sets.

The Technical Side

Stronger in the Technical Side?

If you have the technical skills and can lead a team of other technicians to complete projects working in the company, then you need to hire a team focused on the company: the financials, the marketing, the operations, everything else that makes the company run like a well-oiled money making machine. If you know very little about business, finding the right team can be just as challenging as running a business based on no business knowledge. The best thing to do when in doubt is to research, take classes, learn and understand the basics of business so that you have an idea of who, what, and why you are looking for these different skills.

The Business Side

If you feel that while you have the technical skills, but would have more fun and be more effective working on the company, then you need to focus on hiring the best technicians to perform the projects that you and your marketing team brings in. If you are thinking you cannot afford the best just yet, then hire novices or intermediate technicians that you can train how you want them to perform based on how you want your company to perform. As they learn your company’s system, then they can start managing employees under them. This starts to build the momentum of the company and allows the ‘system’ to start working itself.

The Verdict

So are technical skills more important than business acumen? In my opinion, they hold the same weight. If you are able to provide a technical service, but can not sell it or get it to market, then you are in the same boat as someone who has a business mindset, yet has no service or product to sell. If you are stronger in one area over another, play to those strengths and add in partners and joint-ventures to supplement the areas that you are weak in. In the long run, by playing to the individual’s strengths, a company can position itself best for success.