Are you a propellerhead or do you know someone who claims to be one? In the derogatory sense the propellerhead is of someone who is a "computer geek'', "computer nerd'', "techie'' or simply "hacker''. That's someone who is so immersed in the computer age they are oblivious to the rest of the world.

The image of the propellerhead is a caricature of the computer programmers and information technology (IT) workers who stay up all night before their machines, survive on junk food, dress eccentrically, and speak a cliquish language incomprehensible to ordinary folk.

Some have learned to dress up and behave like one of the executive types, disguising their true fraternity. But you had better get to know the propellerheads because you may have abdicated responsibility for your business to them.

"Technology has become too important to be left to the techies,'' says James Martin in his latest book Cybercorp. He describes the coming cybercorp revolution as one in which more and more business procedures become encoded in systems software.

While Mr. Martin paints a humorous caricature of a profession, he is using it to make the point that two separate cultures have developed in organisations: the "suits'' or business people, and the propellerheads they hire.

The two talk separate languages and each has a disdain for each other based on misunderstanding and lack of knowledge. One is driven by people, profits and business intuition. The propellerhead lives in the world of code, networks and machines.

The result: A dangerous culture clash within organisations.

"We have two cultures, often butted up against each other in the same corporation, tehchnophiles and technophobes,'' Mr. Martin writes. "...Top management may regard the long-haired hackers as lunatics, but the lunatics can put the business in a straitjacket.'' He warns that those in business need to understand their IT departments and the people working for them. It's not enough to give the techies a task and then let them implement it.

The executives need to be fully in control of how the technology is used. Too often they are the technophobes who shirk their responsibility by devolving important decision to their IT people. It is therefore vitally important for them to become a technophile so bad systems don't get implemented for the wrong reasons. The tendency to leave what should be business decisions in the hands of IT workers begins in the boardroom and works it way down throughout all management layers.

"Lack of top-level business guidance of IT has sometimes resulted in systems that are largely a waste of money, systems that are expensively over-engineered, maintenance expenditures with a negative return on investment, unnecessary upgrading to the latest gadgets, but more serious, failure to focus on cybercorp mechanisms that would give a major competitive advantage.'' Recognise some or all of those traits in an organisation you work for or have worked for? Since Mr. Martin describes this as the age of the cybercorp revolution the IT departments are only going to become more important in business organisations.

They are going to control huge chunks of the budget, if not the major portion.

Harnessing the creativity and power of the propellerheads then becomes the key to business success in the cybercorp age. Part of the problem lies in the IT department itself.

"The IT organisation has allowed itself to become largely irrelevant to business, often nursing obsolete mainframes, struggling with software reengineering not business reengineering, and building systems that, though they might use the currently fashionable buzzwords, are the wrong systems because value streams were not reinvented as they should have been.'' To break down the culture clash, the executive must bring the IT department within the mainstream of the corporation and focus their energy into creating systems which serve the core businesses, or value streams, of the company.

Often the propellerheads are cut out of the organisation because of the deep suspicion of them by the executive. A 1995 Computerworld survey of 200 senior executives found 48 percent said they would not appoint their head of IT to any senior business position. This is the "silicon ceiling'' facing many IT professionals.

Martin believes one should not hire someone to head the IT department unless he or she is capable of filling a senior executive position. He describes the best IT organisation as one with two layers: a inner core of technical professionals who build systems, and an outer layer of cybercorp professionals who can communicate with the business people.

"The professionals in the outer layer might be referred to as cybercorp engineers or enterprise engineers,'' Mr. Martin writes. "Enterprise engineering is a complex body of knowledge concerned with identifying the most appropriate enterprise architectures and establishing the most effective change methods for reengineering.'' The Oxford English Dictionary defines "propeller'' as a "person or thing that propels''. Perhaps then this could become the true definition of the propellerhead, of someone who could be one of the most important persons in your organisation, helping to drive it forward into the more competitive cybercorp age.

Mr. Martin is a former computer programmer for IBM -- and hence a propellerhead -- who lives in Bermuda. Cybercorp is published by AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1996.

PROPELLERHEAD -- Are you working next to one?