So says Dionne Kasian-Lew author of the recently published ‘The Social Executive'. In this video interview (at 12 mins) Dionne explains that post the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) there needed to be a level of financial literacy, but she is surprised its not the same now for Digital Literacy which is the biggest game changer of all. Not to have the digital leadership and literacy skills may mean the board miss the digital disruptions and transformations coming at speed to every company, which could wipe out the company.

Full of sweet and simple truths in the inimitable HubSpot style - worth a scroll

Over the last 10 years, there has been a dynamic shift in the way customers and companies are interacting and the evolution of digital communication has changed feedback channels by leaps and bounds. Gone are the days of comment cards, direct mail surveys and the length of time it takes for customers feedback to be heard or actioned in a business. The opportunity that dynamic customer experience programs deliver is new benefits that traditional approaches could never offer.
 
Technology companies like Apple and social platforms like Facebook and TripAdvisor are to either thank or blame for this shift. Social or peer-to-peer customer service and feedback in real time are two game changers that can no longer be ignored. A holistic customer feedback program must now reflect the impact and opportunity that digital, mobile and social behaviour create and is a shift that business must adapt to and serve.

We assume our reality:

Is reality.
Is right.
But we have access to only the tiniest amount of information that’s out there, whether in the electromagnetic spectrum or conscious brain.

This means that our reality:

Is a reality (one of many).
Is shaped by limited information.
Despite this, we are happy to stake a claim to being right and dismiss others’ experiences as inferior or wrong.

It does a lot of damage. People go to war over it.

Instead, being open to different realities enables us to pool information, articulate a view and consider other options without needing to narrow every discussion down to ‘a winner’.

Same system, different signal

The gap between the information that’s out there and what we can access is real.

Take for example a dog whistle, which we cannot hear because it’s in the ultrasonic sound range. Even if we want with all our hearts to hear it, we can’t. There’s a physiological limit to our hearing range. But the sound coming out of that whistle exists and the dog hears and responds to it.

In this simple example we find it easy to accept that something we can’t see, feel, hear or even know directly has a material impact.

Fear is a powerful, primal emotion that causes our brain to release chemicals that help us stay and fight off danger or get away from it as fast as possible.

We don’t sit down and think about what to do when that instinct is triggered, we react automatically.

This is great for getting us out of harm’s way but when we can’t switch it off it can feel debilitating.

This happens for many reasons:

The incident triggers post-traumatic stress
The source of fear does not disappear (the bully stays put)
We experience related anxieties day after day that aren’t dramatic in isolation but add up (as in chronic stress).
Key to dealing with any of these is getting clear about what’s going on, what’s not and what (if anything) we’re going to do about it.

Legal decisions in the wake of corporate failures like Enron, WorldCom and, in Australia, Centro continue to reinforce financial literacy as imperative for business leaders.

But we are yet to demand the same of arguably the biggest game changer of all, technology.

How beautiful are these observations by Anne Truitt on self-righteousness - 

"Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon.

We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself.

The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery."

Managers of business functions repeatedly ask how to persuade decision makers who dismiss social media of its importance for business.

Yet when I ask these same managers: 

What social technologies could derail your business?
What research published in the last month have you socialized up the line?
What networks do your competitors use and what have you learned from their successes and failures?
How do you educate yourself, your team and the other layers within the organization?
What social media platforms do you use, what works, what doesn’t and what will you try next? 
I am often met with silence. 

There may be strong awareness that social media is significant, but not always the research-driven insights that C-suites depend on, or practical experience that creates "social proof."

If you’re an executive who’s still uncertain about using social media for business, here’s a compelling reason to consider it: almost two billion consumers already do.

And that trend shows no sign of abating, with social media having grown by around 18% in 2013 with predictions it will reach 2.55 billion by 2017.

Still not convinced? Reflect on the fact that the billions of new consumers who are about to emerge globally will have never lived in a world without it.

In today’s age of algorithms, who you are is in part determined by your digital footprint, which means that if you network for business then you will need to network online.

Why? Because while business is in some ways the same as it ever was (based on mutually beneficial relationships), social media has turned the way we form those relationships on its head.

You may look around and think that you (or your peers) don’t use social media and are still doing fine, but this is not looking in the right direction.

Almost two billion people use social media right now and that trend shows no signs of abating with predictions it will reach 2.55 billion by 2017.

Professionals need to look ahead and adapt the way they connect and communicate to keep up with this change.

One way they are doing so is on LinkedIn. Often referred to as the ‘new networking for business’ LinkedIn is actually not so new. In fact it’s 12 years old and has nearly 300 million members around the world, five million of whom are in Australia.

But just signing up and doing nothing is like going to a cocktail party and standing in the corner. You’ve got to know what to do once you are there.

The world of ‘mummy bloggers’ is perhaps an unusual setting for a bitter legal fight – but that is exactly where one broke out last week.

One popular blog by a Gold Coast mum, The Organised Housewife, discovered that a slightly different domain name was redirecting traffic to a competitor.

Her real website – theorganisedhousewife.com.au – was being undermined by someone who had purchased the organisedhousewife.com.au domain name. It’s easy to see how people could get the web address wrong, and how the real site might miss out on readers who intended to visit.

Legal decisions in the wake of corporate failures like Enron, WorldCom and, in Australia, Centro continue to reinforce financial literacy as imperative for business leaders.

But we are yet to demand the same of arguably the biggest game changer of all, technology.

The impact of emerging technologies, including social media platforms that allow instant global communication, is deeply disrupting the nature of business.

In some industries that spells opportunity; for others, such as traditional print media, displacement.

But given the speed and ubiquity of technology-driven change, businesses will need to become digitally literate, and fast.