Leaders, by the definition of the word, should be out in front of their charges guiding them as to the next move to make, or the next place to go. But what happens when leaders fail to lead? What happens when they choose to not even take a stand on the direction the team should go? Such is the case in our technology-augmented world. We are in a strange, and temporary, time when many leaders are ignoring, or outsourcing their technology decisions because they feel inadequate to make a sound decision. At the micro level, this is an issue. For example, when a leader cannot even explain the concept of cloud computing, it is highly likely their organization will not have a sound strategy for leveraging this concept. Yet it is not the micro issues I want to write about today – it is the macro issue of leaders choosing where on the continuum their operations should be when it comes to technology adoption.
Am I the only one that sees that technology is growing in its influence on profits and success? This holds true for just about any kind of organization so don’t waste my time explaining to me that funeral homes and yoga centers still don’t need it. The fact is that every other entity benefits, and those benefits are swelling every day. When banks have to lock their doors when the power goes off, and the most well thought of companies in the economy are all technology plays, I think it should be clear. We are mainlining digital tools and this addiction is not going to go away – ever.
To be fair, I run into a few leaders of more traditional businesses every now and then that get it. However, for the most part, I meet, read about, and get impacted by loads of leaders that still don’t get it. They think customer service is strictly hand-to-hand combat and ignore the fact that customers now post comments in a public forum that includes 1.8 billion people. They go blind to the fact that business intelligence can give them insights in to trends and anomalies that could improve performance dramatically. I’m not asking them to learn how to program routers or design federated security models. I am just asking for the to invest some time learning about the general concepts that would help them make good decisions where a little technology insight would be helpful. Back to cloud computing…
In some cases, the last people who will suggest a cloud migration program will be the IT department. In all fairness, would you volunteer a solution that might cut your staffing levels in half? If you have a team of .Net programmers, do you think they would ever suggest a different platform for development? Do you think your network security guy is going volunteer the information that he has about 40% of the knowledge that you really need to be safe? Sure, large companies might have a CTO who will be brave and deal with situations like this, but medium sized companies are now floundering with 50 and 60 year old C-suite execs that are really struggling to make good decisions. Hence, they are lagging. They learn most of their lessons from competitors. They are leaving critical tools on the shelf because they lack the knowledge that they even exist, or have little faith the organization could get them implemented. Lagging behind with technology should not be worn as a badge of honor. It does not mean that you are artfully avoiding the bleeding edge. It means you lack the courage, work ethic, and vision to learn how to use a new set of tools to your advantage. And there really is no excuse for this…
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Scott Klososky is one of the first successful Internet entrepreneurs and is a highly sought-after technology and future trends speaker. You can read this article and others on Scott’s blog Technology Story.
