You can't manage what you don't understand
"The understanding of what is needed in terms of objectives, outcomes, and services is what is required..."
Understanding what is needed will only get you so far. Knowing how to deliver it is something entirely different. It's your ability to communicate your vision, to convert it into actionable items, to ensure the people implementing it have the skillset to do so, to set realistic schedules etc etc that will determine how successful you are.
"The construct of a good coding team and a team Lead you can trust and have done work with in the past."
If your business plan is to hire brilliant people to do all the work for you because you don't know your field deeply enough to do it yourself... you're in trouble. Even if you were able to find someone who was brilliant, why would they want to work beneath someone that doesn't understand what they do, instead of doing the same thing themselves, for more money, and without the hassles of a boss? And as a side question: Even if there was such a perfect employee out there waiting to be hired - how do you expect to be able to hire for their coding and development-leadership skills if you haven't had experience in these areas yourself?
"...does a CIO understand the incremental detail at the coal face..."
I too don't think this analogy holds true. While a CIO doesn't need to know all of the implementation details of a project, they'd better understand the details that are crucial to the success of that project. If the CIO doesn't understand the details that are filtering up to them they are not going to be able to make good decisions.
Lastly, I do respect your views, even though I don't agree with these particular ones. You should show the same respect to Chip. Your first two sentences are very disrespectful in my opinion, which is unfair as Chip consistently provides well-thought-out and practical advice. -1 from me for this rudeness.
