Leadership and technology

“Ah, technology! I hate it,” goes the complaint of many people. Technology is, indeed, one major cause of modern day stress.

But suppose you can get rid of it. Suppose you throw your smart phone in the waste can, then go to the office on Monday, unplug your computer, the telephone and the fax machine, and cut off all Internet connections. Suppose you fire all the people in IT as well – you won’t need them anymore anyway. Would life become stress-free then?

The question is, how would you be able to work? How would you be able to lead? How would you be able to live?

The answer: you can’t.

Leaders need to realize that today’s technology is our modern day life support system. It’s quite unimaginable to lead or live without it.

One generation ago, the FTSE100 was created. It represented the biggest and the best of British business. Students were told to emulate the leaders of the companies on the list. Those names, both of the leader and of the company, became the inspiration and aspiration of many business students and young professionals.

Today, only 28 of the original 100 remain on the list. The others have been taken over, overtaken or have simply disappeared.

Let’s go to a different continent.

Look at the S&P 500 in the United States or the Fortune Global 100, and you’ll see that, even with the many books, magazines and business academic literature featuring those titans and superstars of business over the course of just a few years, there’s an astonishing failure rate among them.

Everything in this world is uncertain. I’ve personally witnessed the closing of the electronic giant Circuit City, and I had personally been there during the last two days of Tower Record’s existence. Technology has made our world even more ever-changing.

And technology can eradicate an entire industry. Young people today don’t even know what the names Remington, Smith-Corona and Underwood stand for. And I don’t think they’d care if they knew.

Technology was originally meant to just simplify work, and it did. But over time, it has gained power to do so much more. It has democratized information and knowledge, brought down geographical barriers in communication, reduced transactions to nano-seconds, and made the pace of life faster (and faster still with each passing day).

To lead is already difficult. And today, it’s practically impossible without the use and help of technology.

And so people need to learn how to master technology. And leaders need to learn even more of this.

There’s no single formula for successful leadership. If there were, we could just get a software to make ourselves better leaders. Or we could install one in our computer and program it to lead.

Each leader works in his or her own leadership context, with his or her own “mix” of leadership skills. But whatever the mix, technology know-how should be in it to be able to lead effectively.

Still, no technology in the world can help an unethical leader lead successfully. I’ve observed that while most people are hired for their technical skills, they are fired or let go of for their questionable values and/or lack of people skills.

Technology is a fact of life. But values and character are life themselves. So while developing ourselves to become people of great skill, we need to make sure we’re becoming people of notable character as well.

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