Technology & Leadership
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Participant
When I talk to information technology specialists in organizations, they are always trying to figure out ways to serve top management, how to get the CEOs to use computers, how to prepare data that might help with their decision- making. I think that they fail to understand that top leaders typically don't want "information". That is, they don't want it until it has been massaged. To offer them access to inventory or personnel records or any other huge databases is not appealing. They want interpretations of information, opinions, advice, experience, stories, wisdom. That's why when choosing between databases and each other, top executives will always choose each other. Now, email has helped to give them a new kind of access to each other, and increasingly it is being used. But email is a primitive communication device compared to what is already available in conferencing technology, let alone what could be available if the leaders were to become involved with the technologists and other researchers in trying to figure out how information technology could serve their strategic interests.

Anyone know where that's happening?

Participant
Alex, I like to call myself a technology pragmatist. I believe that CEOs are correct in avoiding the personal use of computers until they understand the connection between what they do and what computers can do. It used to drive me crazy when people would put executives through "computer boot camp" and teach them things like operating systems. Such a colossal waste of time!

Instead, it's my belief that we need to look at what we're trying to accomplish and then select the right technology, the right building, etc. to match the objective we have. Sounds simple, but most IT departments have been working on a technology-driven model for years.

Richard is right, executives want access to the minds of their colleagues and it is the collaborative tools (both technical and non-technical) that can be of most value to them personally. It was quite an uphill battle in 1990 to convince people of this when I wrote Leadership and the Computer. All anyone wanted to talk about was databases and I was talking about things like computer conferencing, etc.

I'd like to set forth an idea I have about leaders, decision-making, and management. In the past few years management and popular literature seem to be fixated on "top executives" CEOs, etc. And in my last book, I myself focused on CEOs. But in this new book, I intentionally used the word "management" and, while I included a chapter on top executives, I wanted to make the point that in an increasingly chaotic and fast paced environment, we need whole systems of people working interactively to handle the variety generated by the system instead of simply relying on the "brain of the firm" as Beer would call it. Therefore decision-making has to happen at all levels, strategy has to be generated at all levels, and technologically assisted collaboration is appropriate at all levels.

If this is so, then communication and collaboration become more important than ever (and incidentally I use a much broader definition than most people of communication). Therefore, information tools, use of space, large group approaches, storytelling, etc. become more and more important to our ability to cope with the complexity that, of course, we ourselves generated.

Don (Hi!), in my opinion Engelbart's term "augment" really isn't out of date. Now we're capable of augmenting the intellect of whole systems of people (of course Doug was doing the same thing via Arpanet with some slightly different tools).

Hope this isn't too long a post. I'll pass the talking stick and sit back down now.

Participant
It's like old times for me to see Mary and Don online. What a pleasure. I won't take the time of this conference to reminisce, but I do want you to know how glad I am that you are with us. Don, I hope that you pursue the line of thinking you were taking in your initial comment. Too often I think that we regard IT only in corporate or institutional terms, but it is my hope that we can mobilize the top leadership in the ILF to deliberate on, and suggest policies relating to, the broader strategic social and political applications of IT as well.

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