Digital Literacy Is the New Financial Literacy

I have been watching this for 20 years. The CEO who can recite their gross margin, their data days, their cash position to the decimal and has absolutely no idea what the technology is doing, what it's costing them, or whether the decisions being made on their behalf are the right ones.

Technology is one area that is outgrowing CEOs at lightning speed. Questions like what works for their business model, what solves the problem now but creates deficit and becomes a financial drain later, where to go off-the-shelf, where to go bespoke, these are not just IT questions. They are business questions, and the scary thing is most CEOs cannot answer them.

Data is the most dangerous blind spot because data is virtual, stored digitally, so by default it gets assigned to the IT domain, you know, trust the IT guys with their magic and wizardry and let them handle it. But here is the thing.

See, having a CFO, for example, does not absolve a CEO from understanding financial performance. You cannot hand your P&L to your CFO and say, "I trust you. You're making the right decisions and not ripping us off." You still look, you still challenge, you still know enough to know when something doesn't add up.

And the same rule applies to technology. Having a CTO or a fractional CTO is not a reason to stop looking. Digital competent is not yet treated as an integral CEO competency, but it needs to be because I have seen the lack of digital literacy in CEOs drift organization back to the Stone Age.

And the age of AI, a weakness on the digital front, doesn't just make you behind, it makes you obsolete.