NAVIGATING THE TECHNOLOGY SURGE: A BALANCING ACT FOR LEADERS

Abhijay is a seasoned technology leader with 22 years of experience in IT and Analytics across different industry sectors. He has been instrumental in guiding businesses to use technology for profitable growth and not just chase trends. Currently, he heads the Data Engineering and Analytics business in a specialist Healthcare services firm which has some of the top US based hospitals and insurers as clients.

- Abhijay Datta

With the extreme pace of technological advancements, how should leaders think of developing and retaining their people to make them high performing?

When I started 20 years back, technology was still there, but it was slow moving. We witnessed serious advancements of technology perhaps every 5 years or more and older technologies stayed longer. Fast forward to the current times, we see exciting new technology emerging every few months with the potential to disrupt all walks of human life.

Businesses are finding it difficult to navigate this “technology bloat” as I call it. And businesses are nothing but the employees who run them. I feel a leader should have open conversations with employees. They need to start mentoring them on taking personal ownership in upskilling and reskilling. Back in the olden days, employees expected their managers to guide them through their career. But today, the most impactful thing would be to create a platform for learning and experimenting inside companies.

Motivate employees to master the relevant technologies that can grow the business. It is important to educate employees that though modern technology appears to be encroaching into daily work, if we can learn to use them as aids, we can become 100x more productive. Today’s leaders have to encourage their employees not to see technology as a competition but more as an aid to create higher quality output.

Tell us a little bit about how should a leader balance between the phenomenal promise of technology – specifically AI – and the ethical responsibilities? 

The pace at which technology is evolving, government regulations at least will not be able to keep up with the advancements. And in a way it is not bad, we do not want to kill the spirit of innovation with ill-formed laws. This is where I see ethics and self-governance will play a critical role in the coming decades.