I'm not a "tech guy". In fact I really don't want to know as much as I do about the guts and inner workings of certain technologies.

But I do.

As a business owner I'm confronted with my ignorance in certain areas daily.

Even still today I find WYSIWYG editing actually:

What you see is not anything close to what you thought you'd get in the pleasant editor so you have to switch to the raw html editor.

So here's the way things work for me. Do they work this way for you?

I hang with very smart people and ask them for help and ideas on how to execute on great, money making ideas that win new business and propel clients.
Those smart people suggest a platform or technology that we know nothing about.
I begin "toying around" with the technology/platform and spend a week inefficiently flummoxing around and building a list of questions and stymies.
We approach gurus again and pay them to execute for us while we answer that list of questions and work side by side.
Our knowledge, having reached a new plateau, empowers us to get more done on our own, faster than ever before while grasping EXACTLY how LONG things take to get done. (What took us 40 hours last week took only 6 paid hours of "edu-working" with the wizard.)
Now we can execute rapidly on the parts of the technology that have a very low opportunity cost and engage the resident sorcerer to execute on the advanced potion with clear and realistic expectations on how long will take and what it will cost to get done.

Then, we do this all over again with new tools and technology that make us better and more desirable to those businesses and individuals that will engage our services and products.

IT folks probably have a love/hate relationship with us. We ask a lot of questions. We like to learn what they know so we can be better business owners/executors. We get no pleasure in knowing what makes the car run...but now we can build quite a bit of that car from scratch rapidly and bring in some experts to accessorize it. (ok maybe we get a little pleasure...shhh)

But our knowledge level means that we can set realistic IT expectations and goals for both time and monetary investment. These items are distinctly absent in a majority of the corporate America IT tug-of-wars many of you have first hand knowledge of.

Who gets blamed for being behind schedule? IT.

Who wasn't given enough time or resources? IT.

Conversely:

Who blames the very people people who generate the revenue to pay their salaries for everything wrong with their jobs? IT.

Who leverages the fact the they know techno black magic to ensure expectations set upon them are gray at best? IT.

Our approach ensures open communication and realistic expectations between the business demands...and the technology requirements. It works. Or for us...