Tech Leadership Is Not Going To Wait For You To Learn How To Be Effective

We've seen several thought pieces recently on the future of technology leadership. The bad news is that it's evolving probably faster than people can cope with. The good news is that the future of technology leadership is creating opportunities for leaders who deliberately work at being effective.

I like how James Azar put it: "Modern business isn’t built anymore. It’s integrated." That's right. Your AI models, your platforms, your security systems -- all of it is on an 'as-a-service' model. That creates modularity compatibility challenges. It also creates team utilization challenges and possible threats from over-servicing especially when supply chains are added. 

Over at Deloitte Consulting they think a lot about agentic AI. Here is their key chart:

As they put it (quoting at length):

What’s clear is that the underlying shifts aren’t happening in isolation. They operate across every layer of the tech stack: computing, coordination across agents and data, interaction across interfaces and both visible and invisible networks, and trust.

The protocol choices, interface bets, data anchoring, and trust architecture decisions that technology leaders make today will reshape the tech stack from the ground up. Those decisions will determine what the organization is able to do next.

Right now, that future is coming together piecemeal—one application, one modernization effort, one architecture decision at a time. But the system is changing simultaneously in every layer at the same time.

The challenge for organizations, then, isn’t just to modernize, but to design systems they won’t have to undo.

Much as does James, the Deloitte team emphasizes the choices that leaders must make as pieces of AI-powered tech trends shape how people -- customers, boards, employees -- use systems, and what they expect from those systems. 

What can a leader do?

If you're hiring a leader, you need to know the talent that person brings to the situation. It's not about doing everything all at once, it's about intentionally, deliberately future-proofing systems and development. It requires the new hire to understand the situation and the trends, and to not take the bait to do what's worked before. 

"Success" before today was in an outdated environment. If you think you're successful because you have been successful in the past, we're waiting for you to learn how to be successful. Tick Tock.

If you are a leader, your best opportunity is in front of you today: deliberately interrogate your leaders, your vendors, your customers, and your team. Build up your open-minded approach. Know what could come, and then game it out in real time. You may not get it right each time but you will set the tone for creating a forward-leaning team.

The future is coming at you. You may not know what it looks like but waiting for certainty is certainly wrong.

Ask us how you can future-proof your tech leadership capacity.

(image credit: originally uploaded by Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute)/Marc Buie (Lowell Observatory)/NASA/ESA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)