By now the reader should be well on their way to the path of invoking their inner geek and learning to embrace technology as an essential element of inspired and successful leadership.  You are rooting for the technologists in your organization and doing what it takes to ensure they are successful.  Furthermore, you are providing the right kind of leadership for these uniquely motivated individuals.  But are you using geek stuff yourself?

I do admit that I am a technology leader and an unapologetic geek.  Furthermore, I held my neighbor’s new iPhone 5 and coveted it (but I didn’t inhale).  But using and understanding technology for a non-technical leader has many advantages.

Failure to use technology yourself (or for your organization) is costly.  I will offer first a counter-example of a boss that I had who I affectionately called a Luddite.  He only recently got rid of his dial-up (oh, don’t act like you’re too young to remember) and jumped into the “modern” world of broadband.  As a result of lack of significant investment in technology, we ended up with petabytes (i.e., a boatload of data) isolated islands of data connected by an archaic infrastructure.  The key issues that followed were (1) the opportunity cost of the inability to innovate and discover through information sharing and aggregation and (2) the costs of duplicative infrastructures and lost productivity.

Still not a believer?  Well, just try using it and see the results.  After the Luddite Leader gets a smartphone, the next thing he needs to jump into is social media – that’s Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc.  This technology provides the leader a powerful means of reaching a large audience of followers (likewise constituents, customers, parishioners, or other stakeholders) in a way that is personal and socially effective.

A colleague of mine recently announced that he was going to start using Twitter.  I really wished he tried it earlier.  He would have discovered that it had a really powerful way of reaching the public more effectively than press releases or memos.  Twitter is a technology that supports microblogging – telling a short story or sharing a thought in 140 characters.  In the foreword of Twitter for Dummies, Jack Dorsey, the inventor, founder, and chairman of Twitter explains the importance of this technology:

“Twitter is a life’s work built around three tenets: minimize thinking around communication, expose trends in local and global circles, and spark interaction. What you’re holding in your hands describes an essence of communication upon which millions will build their own value.”

In other words, let the Muse of Information Technology inspire you to do great things and lead your organization to greatness.  You can communicate with ease, solve business problems, encourage innovation, and other produce an assortment of magical outcomes.   The non-technology executive can do this by being an advocate for technology in her organization, inspiring the technology professional in her organization, and by using technology herself.  Like this blog to get started!