The Great Digital Confession: When CEOs, Politicians, and Experts Agree – They Know Nothing

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the era of leadership without a clue. Imagine a CEO stepping onto the stage, flanked by their board of directors and a carefully selected backdrop of screens showing animated graphs and buzzword-filled slogans. The audience holds its breath as the CEO leans into the microphone and utters the unthinkable: “We don’t understand digitalisation. We don’t understand information security. Never have. Never cared. And frankly, we’ve been winging it this whole time.”

What a revelation it would be if this honesty weren’t so rare. Because, truth be told, this lack of understanding isn’t confined to the corner office. It extends to prime ministers, country presidents, and entire cabinets of political appointees. The same cluelessness, confidence, and calculated ambiguity stretch from corporate boardrooms to parliaments, all dressed up in the latest buzzwords: “blockchain,” “AI-driven transformation,” “cyber resilience.” They throw these terms around as if repeating them often enough might summon their meaning into existence. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

Their digitalisation strategy is the equivalent of redecorating a crumbling house by adding some flashy LED lights and declaring it a “smart home.” The wiring? Still sparking. The plumbing? Leaking everywhere. But as long as the outside looks good, who’s going to notice the cracks? Certainly not the public—because, let’s face it, most people don’t know any more about digitalisation than the CEOs or politicians pretending to lead us into the future. This is the great enabler of the modern leadership charade: the digital divide and the epidemic of digital illiteracy.

To truly understand how we got here, we need to rewind the clock to Jay Galbraith’s 1977 study on organisational design. Yes, 1977. Galbraith warned that the shift to digital systems would require fundamental changes in how organisations operate. Traditional hierarchies, he argued, would need to be flattened, authority decentralised, and collaboration prioritised. These weren’t radical suggestions—they were common sense for anyone paying attention to the direction technology was heading. But, as we now know, common sense rarely survives the corporate or political climb.

Instead of embracing Galbraith’s insights—or the countless studies that followed—leaders clung to the old ways. A 2001 study published in the Journal of Management reinforced Galbraith’s findings, showing that leadership resistance to cultural and structural change was one of the primary barriers to successful digital transformation. In other words, the problem isn’t technology; it’s people. Specifically, it’s the people in charge, whose obsession with control and reluctance to admit ignorance have become the greatest obstacles to progress.

But let’s not forget Dunning-Kruger syndrome, the psychological phenomenon where people with limited knowledge vastly overestimate their competence. This effect is rampant in leadership, particularly when it comes to digitalisation and cybersecurity. CEOs and politicians confidently make decisions about systems they don’t understand, secure in the belief that they’re “visionaries” simply because they can pronounce “quantum computing” without tripping over their tongues.

Take, for instance, the now-infamous CEO who admitted, “We thought digitalisation was about moving paper files to the cloud. Then someone mentioned APIs, and I thought they were talking about an airline.” Or the prime minister who proudly announced a national digital strategy, only for the flagship app to crash on launch day because no one bothered to test it under real-world conditions. These are not isolated incidents; they are symptoms of a broader epidemic of overconfidence and incompetence.

Now, let’s talk about Brandolini’s Law, because it plays a starring role in this tragicomedy. Brandolini’s Law states that the energy required to refute nonsense is exponentially greater than the energy needed to produce it. And nowhere is this more evident than in the digital age. Leaders churn out buzzwords, half-baked strategies, and vague promises faster than experts can debunk them. By the time someone explains why their “revolutionary AI initiative” is impractical or their “blockchain-based solution” is unnecessary, they’ve already moved on to the next poorly thought-out idea. It’s an endless cycle, powered by the same ignorance that brought us here in the first place.

This brings us to the digital divide, which isn’t just a gap between those with access to technology and those without. It’s a chasm between those who understand how digital systems work and those who don’t. The divide doesn’t just disadvantage the unconnected; it enables the connected to exploit their ignorance. Leaders who don’t understand digitalisation use the public’s lack of understanding as a smokescreen, framing their failures as “learning experiences” or blaming them on “user resistance.” It’s not their fault the programme didn’t work—it’s the public’s fault for not being ready.

A 2018 report by the World Economic Forum highlighted how the digital divide exacerbates social inequalities, creating a cycle where the digitally excluded are left further behind. But instead of addressing this divide, leaders exploit it. They use it to shield themselves from accountability, knowing that most people don’t have the knowledge to question their decisions. In a world where even the basics of digital literacy are rare, ignorance becomes a tool of power.

Our confessional CEO put it best: “The beauty of digitalisation is that it’s so complex, so poorly understood, that I can say almost anything about it, and no one will call me out. I can announce an AI initiative without explaining how it works. I can talk about blockchain without understanding what it does. And I can frame every failure as a learning opportunity, because no one really knows what success looks like in this space.”

This, dear readers, is the state of leadership in the digital age. It’s not about solving problems or creating value; it’s about maintaining control, managing perceptions, and ensuring that the power dynamics remain unchanged. The digital divide and widespread digital illiteracy are not obstacles to these leaders—they’re enablers. They provide the perfect cover for decisions that prioritise short-term gains over long-term solutions.

And now, the saviour of the moment: Artificial Intelligence. Having realised they’ve bungled digitalisation and cybersecurity, leaders have latched onto AI as their new golden ticket. Never mind that they understand AI even less than they understand APIs. It’s shiny, it’s complex, and best of all, it sounds impressive in a board meeting.

AI, like digitalisation and cybersecurity before it, is being treated not as a tool for meaningful change but as a marketing gimmick. Leaders invoke its name in speeches, plaster it across strategic documents, and throw millions at “AI-driven solutions” without ever asking the most basic question: “What problem are we actually trying to solve?” The answer, more often than not, is that they’re trying to solve the problem of perception. As long as they look like they’re embracing innovation, the specifics don’t matter.

The saddest part of all this is that AI, like digitalisation, has the potential to transform lives. Studies have shown that AI can improve healthcare, streamline public services, and even reduce inequality when implemented thoughtfully. But these benefits will remain out of reach as long as the people in charge are more interested in appearances than outcomes.

What comes after AI, you ask? Once its limitations become apparent and its shine begins to fade, what will our leaders cling to next? Perhaps quantum computing will take its place as the new buzzword of the moment. Or maybe they’ll invent something even more nebulous to distract us from the fact that, once again, nothing has really changed.

Here’s to the digital age, where the technology evolves faster than our ability to understand it, and where leadership crawls along at a snail’s pace, dragging the rest of us along for the ride. May your broadband be fast, your VPN secure, and your patience infinite. And if all else fails, there’s always tea. ☕