Five Mindset Hacks for Digital Leaders

How do you make good decisions when you don’t know what you don’t know?

This is a relevant question for the business world, but also for life in general.?

I recently had to give a talk in a city I was not familiar with. I booked a hotel within a 10 minute walk from the venue and thought I had made a great choice.

Only when I arrived at my hotel did I realise that it was in a scary neighbourhood, where a 10 minute walk with a laptop would have been impossible.?

Sometimes we won't get it right, but we can't let that stop us.

Going into the unknown is a very uncomfortable feeling, especially for high achievers, who were trained to believe that success meant knowing everything.?

Remember what you had to do to get an A in an exam? You had to know a specific answer to a specific question in great detail.?

This perfectionism was carried on to our workplace. When you started your career, your employer expected you to do your prescribed task perfectly.

But, as we rise up in our careers, we learn that we are not going to have all the answers. This is has been taken to an extreme in the Digital Age.

As a Business Leader today, you are in an environment dominated by technological change.

This change can feel fast and sudden. Generative AI wasn’t even something we discussed 18 months ago, and today it is changing industries.?

No wonder that the smartest most high achieving people get nervous!

So how do you make the right decisions in a world of unknowns and not go mad from the overwhelm?

Here are my top 5 mindset hacks:

1: Make peace with the fact that you will never know everything.?

When people who are used to aiming for perfection hear that they depend on something that they will never fully grasp, they get queasy.?

But queasy isn’t going to make you CEO, get you a board seat or help you sign a client.

You have to remain confident that what you don’t know, you will figure out and hire the right people to help you.

2: You cannot know everything, but you must understand the basics.?

You have to understand the core differences between a digital business and a traditional one, and know how a product goes from idea to scale.?

Just reading about big data in the Wall Street Journal is not enough.?

To get started, take my free course on the top 5 Tech Concepts Every Business Leader Needs To Know.?

3: Be a constant learner.

The most successful founders and C suite executives I know are always learning about technology and business.?

For example, when Jennifer Byrne became the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft US, she took a course on user experience design, to fill a gap in her knowledge. (Listen to my interview with her here: 74. How I got the top job in tech)

If the CTO of one of the world’s biggest tech companies is still taking courses about digital innovation, what does this mean for the rest of us??

Keep making investments in your professional education. This is the price of entry into the arena today.

4: Know how to relate business to technology.?

Remember, technology is a tool, not an end in itself.

If you are talking to a technologist and get confused by what they are saying, ask them how what they are working on relates to business.?

Is their tool going to help drive revenue? Will it make customers happier? Will it impact security??

Businesses make money by solving problems for people who can pay for solutions. Technology helps with that. That is it.?

5: Remember the value you bring.?

Technology feels magical to us, so we look at technologists as demi-gods. Look at the awe with which the media covers Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

But, when we do that, we dismiss everyone else who is not a technologist, and thus devalue other skills and talents, including our own.?

This is not going to make you CEO, get you a board seat or help you sign a client.?

What will? Being clear on the value that you bring.?

Are you brilliant at bringing in new sales? Are you a genius when it comes to finance? Do you instinctively feel consumer trends before everyone else??

These are amazing talents, that companies and investors treasure.?

See yourself as an equal partner to a technologist, not luddite worshipping a genius.?

The more you become clear on the value you bring, learn how to speak tech and collaborate with your tech colleagues, the more interesting and lucrative your career will be.?

This is how we build our Digital Age.

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To discuss how our?trainings?can help you and your colleagues succeed in the Digital Age book a?consultation call?here. Our most popular trainings are on:

• How to Innovate with Confidence
• Design Thinking for Business Leaders
• Building a Tech Venture as a Non-Techie
• Get Tech Clients! Essential Concepts for Professional Services

Happy clients include Royal Bank of Canada,?Oxford University and Constellation Brands.

Speak soon,

Sophia