Digital Illiteracy in the Boardroom: The Leadership Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
Corporate SA is having two very different digital conversations.
The first is happening in universities, marketing departments, software houses, data teams, innovation hubs, start-ups and agency boardrooms. It is a conversation about AI, automation, data architecture, customer journeys, attribution modelling, machine learning, CRM ecosystems and digital growth.
The second conversation is happening in many executive committees across the country.
And unfortunately, it often starts with:
“Can you explain that in simpler terms?”
For a nation that has embraced digital technology at scale, we remain surprisingly uncomfortable with digital leadership.
According to DataReportal, South Africa had over 50 million internet users by the start of 2025, representing nearly 79% internet penetration. Mobile connections exceed the country’s population, while digital engagement continues to grow year on year. Yet despite this consumer adoption, South Africa continues to rank poorly on international measures of digital competitiveness and digital skills readiness. Recent studies place the country 54th out of 67 nations for digital skills availability. Meanwhile, industry research consistently points to leadership capability and digital literacy as major barriers to transformation.
The irony is difficult to ignore.
Our customers are digital.
Our employees are digital.
Our competitors are digital.
But many leadership structures remain stubbornly analogue – and this is a reality that I have had first-hand experience of.
Marketing Is Not the Poster Department
Before we go further, let’s address one of corporate South Africa’s most persistent misconceptions.
Marketing is not the department that makes posters.
It is not the team responsible for logos, branded gazebos, corporate gifts and social media captions.
At least, not if it is functioning properly.
Modern marketing sits at the intersection of customer insight, behavioural science, technology, data and revenue growth. Marketing teams today are responsible for understanding customer acquisition costs, conversion rates, lifetime value, retention, customer experience, automation, lead generation and digital ecosystems.
In many organisations, marketing is one of the clearest indicators of whether a business understands its customers.
The challenge is that many executives still evaluate marketing through a lens built twenty years ago.
When a marketing leader discusses attribution modelling, customer journey mapping, CRM integration or algorithmic optimisation, there is often an assumption that the conversation has become unnecessarily complicated, even more so when the discussion includes advertising acquisition costs and ROAS.
It is not true that these conversations are complicated; what is true is that the business environment has become more complicated.
Marketing simply evolved with it.
Digital Is Not Social Media
One of the biggest misconceptions about digital careers is that they begin and end with social media.
They do not.
Digital professionals spend far more time thinking about systems than posts.
We work with legacy data that must now live inside modern ecosystems.
We build customer journeys across multiple platforms.
We create measurement frameworks.
We design automation logic.
We analyse behavioural signals.
We translate customer intent into business intelligence.
We architect growth.
The social media post is often the smallest part of the equation.
What many executives fail to appreciate is that digital disciplines are still relatively new professions. The internet economy itself is barely a generation old. The platforms, algorithms, technologies and customer behaviours we work with today did not exist when many current executives began their careers.
That means digital specialists are often solving problems that have no historical precedent.
The playbook is still being written.
And yet these professionals are frequently dismissed as “too technical”, “too complicated” or “too digital.”
The Translation Tax
This is where the conversation becomes personal.
I have spent over thirteen years in the workplace, with more than five years serving in senior management roles.
Throughout my career, one message has followed me consistently.
“Don’t speak too complicatedly.”
“Use simpler language.”
“The executives won’t understand.”
“Can you make it less technical?”
Over time, I realised something uncomfortable.
The burden of translation always sits with the digital expert.
Never with the executive.
We ask specialists to simplify their expertise for leadership teams.
We rarely ask leadership teams to improve their understanding of the disciplines they lead.
Imagine telling a CFO to avoid financial terminology because the executive committee may not understand it.
Imagine asking a legal executive to stop using legal language because it sounds too technical.
Imagine asking an engineer to simplify engineering concepts because leadership is unfamiliar with them.
It would be absurd.
Yet digital professionals are expected to do exactly that every day.
The Future Cannot Be Led by People Who Refuse to Learn Its Language
At some point, we need to say the quiet part out loud.
Digital experts are not the problem.
Digital language is not the problem.
Digital transformation is not failing because specialists are too technical.
It is failing because too many leaders have accepted digital illiteracy as acceptable.
Leadership has never been about knowing everything.
But leadership has always required a commitment to learning.
The modern executive does not need to become a data scientist.
They do not need to become a software engineer.
They do not need to become a paid media specialist.
But they do need to understand the language of the future well enough to make informed decisions about it.
Because every business today is becoming a technology-enabled business whether it likes it or not.
Every customer journey is becoming digital.
Every industry is becoming data-driven.
Every organisation is becoming increasingly dependent on technology for growth, efficiency and survival.
The executives who continue treating digital as a specialist side conversation are not protecting their organisations.
They are limiting them.
A Challenge to Leadership
South Africa does not need fewer digital specialists speaking digital language.
It needs more executives willing to learn it.
The next decade will not belong to the organisations with the biggest budgets or the oldest brands.
It will belong to organisations whose leaders are curious enough to evolve.
The digital professionals sitting around your boardroom table are not trying to sound clever.
They are trying to explain where your customers are going.
The question is whether leadership is prepared to follow.
Because the market will not wait for executive comfort.
And neither will the future.built for young people. It will be built by young people. And the time to act is now.
Zama Mlanjana
About the Author
Growth Strategist and Founder of Unwritten Digital SA, a digital business transformation agency.Â
BMF National Events Committee (NEC) within the PR & Digital Strategy Cluster.
BA Communications Science (UNISA)
Honours Development Studies (UNISA)
Digital Marketing Certificate (Red & Yellow Creative School of Business)
Google Certified – Google Academy
Data Integration Certified – HubSpot Academy
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