Digital maturity: how digital am I?

Some days, and for some things, I can feel digitally aware and digitally sophisticated. Other days, I can feel left behind and quite technophobic. If I am to be successful as a digital leader, I need to be able to inspire people to want to be more digital. This could be hard if many of them are already far more 'digital' than me

So I need to take stock of how 'digital' I really am, leading to decisions on what things to I need to do more (or less) of.

One online tool I encountered which claims to provide a version of this is 'The Digital Competence Wheel'. ( https://digital-competence.eu/)

This is a self-assessment test in which you are asked to place yourself along a seven point scale. The site has some dubious automated analysis and presentation - and may even be primarily intended as a way of trapping email addresses - something digitally aware people should be digitally aware of. But it was, none-the-less, interesting in forcing me to look at my digital competence in the round

My results were as follows, presented in the visually soothing Digital Competence Wheel, the graphic equivalent of management speak to a data visualisation specialist:  

The results are clusters into four sub-themes: Safety (85%), Information (98%), Production (91%) and  Communication (83%) 

Further screens show  my results in relation to the range shows how respondents 'usually' score:

I seem to be at the top end of the 'normal range' or above it. An alternative presentation is shown in the following screenshot, which shows  my rating relative to the norm (norm here I think means the range of responses in total submitted to the site)

As an information analyst and data visualisation specialist, I am going to find a lot to question about how meaningful these results are and how well they are presented. But putting these  important aspects to one side: I appear to rate myself as higher than 'average' in all categories. This chimes with my observation that, outside of work where I am often surrounded by very IT savvy people, I usually have more all round confidence on the digital spectrum than the non-work people I usually mix with. That is not say I am fluent in all digital forms - my six year old granddaughter is currently knocking spots off  me.

The exercise also shows me that, in relative terms,  I think I may need to pay more attention to social awareness, identity management, collaboration, health, law, digital exploration, and 'active participation'. These, for me, are relatively weaker areas.

My overall score was 87%. This apparently puts me in the category level 7 (highly specialised) only one level off the top. Apparently

'Users on level 7 (highly specialised) are able to perform tasks and identify the most appropriate solution, even when solving complex problems, where the solution isn't easily available. They are able to adapt and integrate solutions into their professional practice.'

This is very comforting. So why do I feel so digitally 'average'?

When I first encountered computers, they literally occupied whole buildings. They really had the magnetic tape reels and flashing lights of the 1960s imaginings. They were accessed via punched card and, in the absence of monitors, sent their output direct to printers. In this era, the  people who operated computers were surely very clever people indeed. And certainly far cleverer than me. Or so it seemed.

This feeling of technical intimidation has never quite left me, in spite of all the competence I have built up over the years. My own children, in contrast, never stopped to think that computers might be difficult. They just jumped in and tried things. To them a computer - then a laptop - now a smartphone - is just a device that you get to do things for you. It has a use. It is not something you would learn about for its own sake.

Another generation on and my granddaughter (just six) has worked out for herself how to send recorded voice messages. She had been texting but some of  the spellings were a bit of a struggle so she realised that recording a message is so much easier. She just worked it all out to enable her to communicate with her grandmother during the lockdown   

A lot of this is not about intelligence, or skills, it's about seeing what might be possible using digital technology and then finding a way to make it work. That is almost digital leadership in a nutshell.