ere is a hypothetical:
Key components of your company’s popular drones are manufactured in China and assembled and sold in your country. Whistleblowers have reported that spyware is embedded in these drone components. As the company’s CEO—if you cancel sales to conduct an investigation your holiday season may be obliterated. If you don’t, your products may be furthering hostile state surveillance with potentially serious legal, financial and reputational consequences.
An untrustworthy leader would continue to sell the drones hoping that authorities won’t find out and future fines would be part of the “cost of doing business."
But what would a trustworthy leader do?
Trustworthy leadership—especially as it pertains to frontier tech—not only requires deeply tech–savvy businesspeople. It also requires empathetic and emotionally intelligent leaders who understand the impact of their decisions on key stakeholders—customers, employees, communities and even national security.
The drone company CEO should consider adopting these five guiding principles of trustworthy tech leadership.
They are, in no particular order:
– Be a situationally aware systems thinker and doer. Because of the velocity and volatility of change, leaders must understand the context and systems they operate in (geopolitics, economics, regulatory, etc.). Consider digesting data from the annual World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report and their excellent Digital Trust publications.
– Think and act forward—adopt foresight. The exponential tech leader must exercise foresight through scenario planning. Integrate the work of diverse think tanks like The World in 2050, the Future of Life Institute, All Tech is Human, the Council on Foreign Relations, and so many more.
– Be a curious and continuous learner. Leaders should ensure that continuous learning and improvement is incentivized in the design, deployment, redesign, crisis management and sunsetting of their products and services.
– Be humble, empathetic, and collaborative. In this often unforgiving, fast paced world, the ability to see the larger picture is crucial and having a diversity of experts and contributors is critical. Seek out global resources like the UN’s Digital resources and The Rest of the World.
– Verify, then trust. Always verify first and, only after that, trust tech. Consult experts, understand data provenance, algorithm components and design and so much more. In other words, understand the data and tech sausage making to the best of your ability before deploying anything.
To be a trustworthy tech leader beyond 2025, it is essential – even existential – to reverse the old saying “trust but verify” to a new one:
“Verify, then trust."
a global affairs media network
5 guiding principles for trustworthy tech leadership in 2025 and beyond
Photo by Anni Roenkae via Pexels.
January 22, 2025
Leading in 2025 means ethical tech decisions, foresight, empathy, collaboration, and verifying technology to build sustainable trust, writes Andrea Bonime-Blanc.
H
ere is a hypothetical:
Key components of your company’s popular drones are manufactured in China and assembled and sold in your country. Whistleblowers have reported that spyware is embedded in these drone components. As the company’s CEO—if you cancel sales to conduct an investigation your holiday season may be obliterated. If you don’t, your products may be furthering hostile state surveillance with potentially serious legal, financial and reputational consequences.
An untrustworthy leader would continue to sell the drones hoping that authorities won’t find out and future fines would be part of the “cost of doing business."
But what would a trustworthy leader do?
Trustworthy leadership—especially as it pertains to frontier tech—not only requires deeply tech–savvy businesspeople. It also requires empathetic and emotionally intelligent leaders who understand the impact of their decisions on key stakeholders—customers, employees, communities and even national security.
The drone company CEO should consider adopting these five guiding principles of trustworthy tech leadership.
They are, in no particular order:
– Be a situationally aware systems thinker and doer. Because of the velocity and volatility of change, leaders must understand the context and systems they operate in (geopolitics, economics, regulatory, etc.). Consider digesting data from the annual World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report and their excellent Digital Trust publications.
– Think and act forward—adopt foresight. The exponential tech leader must exercise foresight through scenario planning. Integrate the work of diverse think tanks like The World in 2050, the Future of Life Institute, All Tech is Human, the Council on Foreign Relations, and so many more.
– Be a curious and continuous learner. Leaders should ensure that continuous learning and improvement is incentivized in the design, deployment, redesign, crisis management and sunsetting of their products and services.
– Be humble, empathetic, and collaborative. In this often unforgiving, fast paced world, the ability to see the larger picture is crucial and having a diversity of experts and contributors is critical. Seek out global resources like the UN’s Digital resources and The Rest of the World.
– Verify, then trust. Always verify first and, only after that, trust tech. Consult experts, understand data provenance, algorithm components and design and so much more. In other words, understand the data and tech sausage making to the best of your ability before deploying anything.
To be a trustworthy tech leader beyond 2025, it is essential – even existential – to reverse the old saying “trust but verify” to a new one:
“Verify, then trust."
