Technophobia – are CEOs asking the right questions?

There is fear of technology has been around for as long as technology itself, and like technology itself, this fear is always changing in this new disruptive world.
There is strong evidence of “technophobia” the technical name for this affliction in every age and in every part of the world.

This technophobia is making it hard for chief executives to trust their chief information officers.

Blame technophobia or just bad experiences. But now that information technology has become the linchpin for an organization’s success, CEOs are asking, “How do we make this work?”

CEOs of the world’s largest companies are struggling to keep pace with the impact of digital technology and many are being left behind, placing their corporations at risk in the medium to longer term. Their own senior teams also lack basic IT skills and understanding, without which they cannot steer their corporations into the next millennium. Despite this, corporations are failing to address the problem.

Technology continues to move forward at an alarming pace but a large number of CEOs are failing to mobilise their companies to take advantage of these technological leaps and bounds. Why?

It seems that the link between organisational growth and innovative technology is being disregarded by CEOs. They prefer to ignore the importance of this function rather, perhaps, than admit their own ignorance. You could argue that many CEOs simply don’t have the time to learn how IT fits into the organisation in the same way as marketing, HR and finance do. The latter functions often appear to involve more common sense, perhaps. IT is new and uncharted territory, and this could potentially explain why the IT function remains so isolated from the rest of the organisation.

We frequently encounter business leaders who consider their ignorance of basic technology as being perfectly acceptable. As a traditional business leader why trouble yourself with the technology as long as it works?

But today every sphere of business is impacted by technology, and the success of these businesses is often determined by the way technology is integrated and utilised. The unfortunate truth is that if you cannot engage in meaningful dialogue around how technology is used in your business, at best, you are missing an opportunity and at worst, you are simply not doing your job.

Understanding how to get the best return on investment is vital given the current volatile economic climate. CEOs appear to have great instincts about how their business generates a return from investing in a marketing project or new product offering.

They also understand the importance of careful accounting and financial management. But, installing a new customer-facing application or enabling their workforce with a new device?

It does not resonate in the same way. This, despite overwhelming evidence that the right technological solutions can dramatically reduce costs, drive up efficiency and streamline work flows.

Technophobia at board level is often driven by past experiences of financial overruns, late delivery, wide-scale business disruption and low user satisfactions. While some level of apprehension is justifiable and sensible, significant change has taken place over the past few years to make the situation less intimidating. These include:

* Less risk: Over the last ten years, we have moved away from coding to configuration. This means that software packages are much less risky to develop. Even better, software packages can now be hosted by a partner (so called ‘Software as a Service’ or SaaS) meaning that capital and operational costs are vastly reduced and risks made much more manageable.

* Easy deployment: Technology can now be rolled out more easily. The technical innovations of the past were expensive and slow to develop. Today innovation cycles are shortened. The implication is that rather than paying for leading edge research and development, businesses can adopt a safer ‘fast follower’ strategy and remain highly effective.

* Standardisation: Greater adoption of standards have allowed an explosion of devices. These devices are able to communicate with each other because of common standards in telecommunications, hardware and software.

* Ubiquitous data networks: There are few places in the world where a customer or an employee cannot get access to decent broadband or mobile networks. Data speeds are increasing with technologies like 5G and future advancements will further improve what is already a great experience for most users.

Ex-Googler Jessica Nordlander, recently named Sweden’s Most Innovative Leader by Scandinavian management and leadership magazine Chef, believes it comes down to accepting change as a constant, something chief technology officers (CTOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) are always working with and against.

Nordlander, chief operating officer of Canadian company Thoughtexchange, a crowd conversation tool for leaders, says: “How future leaders utilise technology will be integral to whether they succeed or they don’t.

“There is still a feeling in many organisations that at some point digital transformation can and will be complete. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Future CEOs will need to be very comfortable with constant change.

“Current seismic shifts are blowing up longstanding practices and established prejudices. The move towards non-conventional workforces presents a unique opportunity where strategic use of technology can be exponentially valuable for leaders.”

New research from software company VMware suggests this could become a growing trend. It found 69 per cent of UK business leaders believe executive leadership positions should be filled by people with technology career backgrounds in order to be successful. Some 33 per cent of those it questioned also reported their firm had experienced improved business performance as a result of elevating those with such backgrounds into leadership roles.

One reason many see success in this way forward is because the CTO’s role is very strategic, looking at how technology accelerates revenues, lowers costs and improves customer experience, all key things a CEO must be concerned about.

CTOs also understand the importance of technology in business process transformation, how to use it to achieve a fast return on investment (ROI), and they are used to taking projects from a low level of maturity to scale.

It could also be argued that CEOs with a technology background may also be less inclined to make rushed or poor decisions during times of crisis, for example the coronavirus pandemic, when long-planned technology investment could be one of the first casualties of cutbacks in order to shore up the status quo instead.

CEOs must be able to ask the right questions

And with predictions that the next 30 years of business change will be even more rapid and far reaching than the past three decades, CEOs now have to face their incumbency being overtaken by technology-first challengers. That’s why Dr James Berry, MBA director at University College London, believes technological knowledge is vital for the future CEO.

Finally, the speed of change in the commercial world is largely associated with information technology and electronic commerce. Businesses which do not embrace current technology and anticipate the likely scope of future IT will lose out to their rivals. Directors who fail to appreciate the role and nature of technology in their businesses cannot hope to make informed decisions about future investment policy.

It seems bizarre that CEOs would make crucial decisions about the direction of their businesses without understanding the impact of technology.

Of course, many directors justify their aversion to technology by claiming that IT is insecure, it is important the board gatekeepers of access to their deliberations, even the masters of their own secrecy, and previous aversions begin to disappear.

There is a great quote by Bill Gates that states:

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”