I absolutely agree that you can have fantastic managers from a non-technical background if they're intelligent reasonable people with good people skills. Howev

I absolutely agree that you can have fantastic managers from a non-technical background if they're intelligent reasonable people with good people skills. However... > I've seen some pretty scary discussions about underlying technology in executive management with seasoned industry veterans and it's the usually the person with no domain knowledge that asks the right questions that lead to a good decision. I think the seasoned veteran in this example is not a seasoned veteran - well, depending on how you define the term. Because the people who are best at their jobs tend to "know what they don't know". If someone has bias, they were probably never any good at their job in the first place. So I tend to think if you can find someone who has good domain knowledge and good people skills they will consistently outperform someone with just good people skills i.e. Managers gain nothing by not having proper experience in the domain they're managing.