Tech-phobic executives

Luis is an executive with over 20 years’ experience in senior management roles. He feels slower, heavier… more insecure.

Luis, a self-confessed technophobe, gets left behind when they step on the accelerator.

Perhaps technophobic executives should act differently, exercising a threefold approach of prudence, humility and adaptability to change.

This is the fictional story of Luis, an executive with over 20 years’ experience in senior management roles, primarily in General Management and Operations Management, across various sectors and business areas. Until a few years ago, Luis had been carrying out the responsibilities entrusted to him with competence. His solid business background and extensive experience enabled him to make sound strategic decisions, underpinned by his accumulated intuition, despite his reluctance to use new technologies in his day-to-day work.

But something is changing. He feels slower, more sluggish… more insecure. The demands have increased, and the time allowed for decision-making has been reduced.

The people he deals with are younger than him, and he realises he isn’t speaking the same language. He is unable to keep up, and finds it very difficult to make progress with tasks that require non-verbal communication, collaborative work or even managing his own time. He notices that his counterparts make an effort to come down to his technological level, and Luis, a self-confessed technophobe, gets left behind when they step on the gas.

This story illustrates the situation faced by a large number of today’s managers.

It is still quite common to find managers who have a tendency towards ‘technophobia’ in the course of their work. Nowadays, a 21st-century executive, regardless of their functional area, must carry out their work making intensive use of all kinds of technologies (particularly ICT, cloud tools, social media, personal productivity apps, collaborative tools, unified communications, etc.).

21st-century managers must shake off the image of being technophobes, as this is the only way to work effectively in today’s environment. At networking events and business forums, one still hears colleagues proudly displaying their technophobic behaviour. To use a joke: God kills a kitten whenever someone utters phrases such as ‘I don’t need LinkedIn’, ‘Twitter’s for geeks’, ‘make an appointment with my secretary’, ‘I’ll check my diary in the office and get back to you’, ‘Drop… what?’, ‘the cloud is for angels’,…

Perhaps these people should act differently, exercising a threefold approach of prudence, humility and adaptability to change: Prudence, by avoiding displaying this major weakness in public. Humility, acknowledging their limitations whilst drawing on the confidence and strategic vision that comes from accumulated experience. Adapting to change, acting with determination to comprehensively modernise their professional performance.

Thanks to our focus on one of our core values—technological innovation—EPUNTO’s interim managers are accustomed to using the new technologies currently available to senior management, regardless of their functional area, enabling them to innovate constantly to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work.