Executives, does your e-mail address end in AOL?

by | Mar/17/2010

Three different highly respected business professionals communicated with me today and each of them made comments along the lines of, “Oh—that CEO is so far behind in technology that their e-mail address ends in AOL!”

I’m always ok with it when a CEO, President, or owner is not an IT professional. In fact, it is often easier for an IT professional to do their job if the leader of their organization is not always getting in their way!

IT changes so fast, even faster than clothes go out of style. Perhaps executives need to check in with their peers, or even better, IT professionals to be sure their “IT fashion” is not out of date. Sure, LinkedIn is alive and well today, but will they be the CompuServe of tomorrow? Twitter and Face Book are all the rage, but some fear MySpace is on the way out. Google has plans to make all of them obsolete with Google Buzz.

Many of the executives I work with are NOT experts in IT—and I think that is just fine. That’s why they have good IT professionals they trust on staff and/or outsourced.