No excuse – like it or not, you have to be tech savvy

Today we live at home, in business, on the bus, on the train, in the sky, wherever we are in a tech-driven world. You cannot ignore it; you cannot run away from it, you have to get with it.

By not doing so you render yourself obsolete, you risk falling fast behind. Your career will falter as technology and its concepts permeate everything we do, in business, from supply chain management to HR, to legal, to accounting, to marketing, to sales, to customer service, to everything. It will become commonplace that employees will be expected to hone their skills and bring this into the business across any role and function.

With that goes a dilemma, as your social profile will become increasingly important. The blurring of lines will be crossed as the personal and professional neatly collide with either a crash and burn or blend in perfect unison.

Business can’t ignore the radical pace with which technology will continue to affect our behavior and our intentions. It isn’t going to stop, and throwing words like innovation around and not investing in technology abilities is a fool’s game. Constant education and monitoring on what is going on and coming around the corner means the digital analyst is the lifeblood of a business today, not tomorrow.

As our youth comes through – young adults who have grown up unaware of a technology revolution that has impacted our generation – the world will adopt a new facet of the tech inspired world. A youth that believes this tech world just is – not even a revolution or evolution – how will business leaders embrace their behaviors and knowledge in the workplace? Embrace it? Or dismiss it as “that young chap seems to know all about that internet social media thingy, he can do our Twitter account“?

There is no excuse, man up and tech up because, like it or not, we all have to be tech savvy.

Fi Bendall is the managing director of digital and interactive consultancy company Bendalls Group. With over 20 years’ experience, Bendall has worked with global brands including BBC and Virgin, and is an expert in how businesses can approach strategy in the digital world. You can follow her on Twitter at @FiBendall, and can contact her through Bendalls Group.