The scene is familiar: a board has just approved a multimillion-dollar investment in artificial intelligence. The same directors who have never used ChatGPT debate passionately about algorithmic bias. They discuss privacy risks while sharing confidential documents through their personal email or messaging accounts.
The irony would be amusing if it were not dangerous.
In boardrooms everywhere, a peculiar play unfolds daily: directors pretending to understand technologies they have never experienced. Like film critics who never watch movies, they pronounce with authority on tools they know only from LinkedIn articles.
The gap nobody wants to see
The numbers are revealing:
- 70% of directors approve investments in technologies they have never used
- 80% discuss cybersecurity without understanding the basics of digital protection
- 90% talk about digital transformation while still asking for printed reports
The cost of pretending
This digital theater has real consequences:
- Investment decisions based on fashion, not real value
- Poorly assessed technological risks
- Missed opportunities due to lack of understanding
- Superficial digital transformations
Beyond the PowerPoint
Real understanding comes from direct experience:
- The potential of AI is understood by using it
- Privacy risks are internalized by experiencing them
- Digital opportunities are envisioned by living them
- Algorithmic biases are understood by encountering them
The uncomfortable invitation
It is time for directors to get their hands digitally dirty: experiment with generative AI, try data-analysis tools, live the customer’s digital experience, feel cyber vulnerabilities firsthand. Not to become experts, but to develop intuition and informed judgment.
The new standard
An effective director in the digital age experiments before approving, tests before judging, learns constantly, and admits what they do not know.
For reflection in the boardroom
- How many of the technologies we oversee do we actually understand?
- Do our opinions about AI come from experience or from articles?
- Are we approving investments in tools we have never used?
- Is our digital knowledge theoretical or practical?