I-tech 110 – Blog Post 5

I was in a meeting with a Leader from another team quite recently. In the course of the meeting, he needed me to share a document related to our discussion. Within two blinks, I swiped my palm across my phone to take a screenshot, and then emailed it to him—without missing a beat in the conversation.

Startled he asked me, “What did you just do?”

I was confused. I replied that I had just emailed him the document we were talking about.

“That’s not possible,that was too fast“ he said, visibly impressed.

I was trying hard not to laugh; I told him to go ahead and check his mail. I honestly was not even expecting his reply; he told me he didn’t receive emails on his phone because he had no idea how to set it up. What!!!

To this minute, I still haven’t fully recovered from the shock. What makes this situation really sad is that this is more common than one would think. It still blows my mind how many people are practically allergic to technology.

It’s quite gutting to see leaders who cannot do basic things like creating an Excel spreadsheet to visually represent the numbers or values they bandy around, or put together a PowerPoint presentation. Most don’t even know how to draft a properly formatted letter with a header and footer, let alone use different themes or edit their documents properly. Expecting them to know how to chart their department’s performance or exploding a sector of a Pie chart would definitely be courting the impossible.

How did you become a manager, for Pete’s sake?

How do you keep track of budgets, expenses, or the countless records your department needs? How do you present ideas clearly and persuasively to your team—or worse, to your leaders? How do you expect your organization to believe that the teams you manage are actually using the tools at their disposal or can retrieve information quickly when you can’t even do it yourself?

How?

In my opinion, being Tech-Illiterate in a leadership role—or in any role, for that matter—isn’t just inconvenient, It’s a LIABILITY. This is 2025 my people, you can actually just play around with your personal laptop – hopefully you have one and commit to learning one new thing on the computer every day. We can do this.