In last week’s edition of Leadership Notes, I wrote about what I’m calling “smart eye” technology  and raised some questions from a strategic perspective about the implications of emerging technologies. This week, I’m curious about the implications for me as a leader, for my team and for the organization as the technology we take for granted today is obsolete tomorrow?

So for example, in the line-up at the gate to the aircraft this morning, I heard a couple of men, like me, late “Boomers” in their early 50’s, talking about Blackberries and iPhones. The Blackberry supporter signaled the end of the discussion with the words, ”I like Blackberry because I know it.” Well I’ve got some news for him, his Blackberry, or his iPhone will be changing in the next 3 years. Guaranteed. That doesn’t mean that his particular Blackberry, the one he knows, won’t still work, but there will be apps, there will be tools that he cannot use on his ‘old’ system.  And although I have no idea who this chap is, or what’s going on for him, his comment signals, for me, a certain unwillingness to learn. “I like my Blackberry because I know it” is akin to saying ‘I like my ‘Princess’ phone because I know it.”

A fundamental challenge for us is learning. Deeper than that however is our choice and willingness to learn. Our willingness to learn is in large part related to our humility. Years ago, in one of my first projects in credit union land, I was tasked with the learning and development side of a migration from WordPerfect 5.0 to Word 6. (Yes, that long ago!) The process we used was rather simple, two or three employees would meet with me for half a day, say in the morning. I would show them the ropes in Word 6, and meanwhile the IT folks were literally removing WordPerfect 5.0 from their desktop and installing Word 6, so that by the time they returned to their station after lunch, they had to use Word 6. There are a few stories about learning and humility from that project, and one stands out. An Executive Assistant (EA) who worked along side a very senior leader in the organization, and had for many years, kept cancelling her training sessions with me. She was too busy, she had a vital report, she had a doctor’s appointment, the list of excuses became quite long. And as I reflected on this, it dawned on me that she might, deeper down than simply not wanting to do the training and keep Word 5.0, (remember, ‘I like my Black berry because I know it’) I wondered if it was a question of status for her. You see, she was a ‘go to’ person on all sorts of levels, she worked with the most senior people in the organization and beyond, and she was famous for her attention to detail and expectations of perfection. I walked into her office one day and asked her if she’d like a special training session, just her, no one else. And in fact, I could show her the basics, and leave her be for a half hour to practice by herself, and then come back to show her some more stuff. And you know what, she sighed and said, yes, that would be good. We set it up for the very next day, she showed up, we worked our plan, and I let her make mistakes privately, and supported her every half an hour or so. It took her until about 2 pm that day, but she was ready to go back to work on Word 6. And she did. And the lesson I learned was that sometimes we have to work around pride, we have to honour that for some of us right now, and for all of us at one point or another in the coming months and years, we will find ourselves in a place of conscious incompetence, that is we know that we don’t know, and that is a very uncomfortable place. It is however the place that learning begins.

Technology is changing. That is now a spurious statement. How we respond as leaders however remains key to the success of the organization. Recognizing our own points of pride, and how we might open ourselves to learning, and how we can serve each other as we open ourselves to learning will be vital for our organizations long term sustainability.