One of my favorite courses to teach is titled Leadership and Technology for Winona State’s organizational leadership program. It is intended to provide organizational leaders with a basic understanding of the various facets of technology and how leaders must consider those facets in the development of both strategic and short term decision making. In today’s environment with ubiquitous technology in nearly all aspects of educational organizations and the rise of AI tools, all leaders need to understand how technology decisions can influence the organization overall.
In the first class meeting, there are three key points that I emphasize that leaders need to consider.
1. Balancing usability versus security. Seeing regular news items about ransomware attacks on schools and public organizations tends to push leaders to embrace all of the security recommendations of their IT staff. However, usability is just as important as security. Secure systems that cannot be effectively accessed by end users are not effective. Security systems that require too many steps for end users tend to encourage users to develop work arounds that may be significantly less secure. Leaders must ensure that systems protect data without negatively impacting workflow.
2. Leaders do not need to be technology experts, but they need a basic understanding of the way technology systems are built and how they function within an organizational ecosystem. This foundational knowledge enables leaders to ask informed questions, engage meaningfully in strategic planning, and evaluate the risks and benefits of potential technology investments. Without this baseline understanding, leaders risk becoming overly reliant on technical staff or even IT vendors, which can lead to misaligned priorities, missed opportunities, or inadequate oversight.
For example, a school district superintendent doesn’t need to write code or pull reports, but they should understand how a student information system (SIS) integrates with extant learning management platforms and state reporting tools before approving a new purchase. This awareness helps them ensure that procurement decisions align with instructional goals and compliance requirements, rather than being driven solely by technical convenience or vendor promises.
3. Strong leadership is data-informed and not data-driven. The difference is that data-informed leaders view decisions as based upon data but they also take organizational culture and their leadership experiences into account. This provides the necessary human agency so decisions are made holistically and not only based upon data without context.
For example, a new principal once sent a truancy letter to the parents of a child who was struggling with cancer because they had missed ten days of school. The parents called me to complain. I was shocked, but when I reached out to the new principal, she told me she didn’t think that she had the ability to not follow the ten-day letter rule. Previous leadership had felt that such data had to be followed without considering the context of the absences, etc. As we enter a world that is becoming more data-rich by the day, it is essential that leaders at all levels understand that their experiences and judgement have to be engaged to bring context and hopefully clarity to the piles of data being gathered.
In today’s technology-saturated environment, organizational leaders must develop a strong foundational understanding of how technology influences strategic and operational decisions. Aspiring leaders need to balance usability with security so they recognize that overly secure systems that hinder usability can lead to risky workarounds. They need to understand how technology systems function and how the various facets of technology impact one another within an organization in order to make informed, mission-aligned decisions. Finally, they need to be data-informed rather than data-driven, and be able to contextualize data within the realities of organizational culture and human experience to avoid harmful missteps and make thoughtful decisions.