Tech Curiosity: Why Modern Leaders Can’t Afford to Opt Out of Innovation
Jen Thornton A.C.C.
Championing a corporate environment of learning, experimentation, and innovation. Guiding executive leadership in growing high-performing teams and implementing talent strategy. Onboarding | Prof Dev | Neuroscience
The tools you ignore today become the bottlenecks your team inherits tomorrow.
If you're still calling it "The Slack" or asking if you find yourself saying, "AI is just too hard to figure out," this one's for you.
Technology isn’t someone else’s department anymore. It’s the leadership language of progress.
In today’s landscape, opting out of tech curiosity isn’t neutral, it’s negligent. You don’t need to be a developer. But you do need to be fluent enough to ask the right questions, see the strategic implications, and model adaptability for your team.
Great leaders don’t have all the answers. But they’re always the first to get curious about what they don’t know.
The Playbook (Why It Matters)
Tech isn’t slowing down. It’s compounding. And leaders who opt out of understanding the tools that shape the work? They unknowingly slow down execution, silo learning, and model fear instead of adaptability.
Where does it fit in the 304 Talent OS™??
Tech Curiosity lives in Play #2 - Org Design for Scale. Because scalable systems don’t just need technical tools, they need leaders who engage with them.
As part of the Modern Leadership Stack, Tech Curiosity isn’t about staying trendy or knowing the hottest AI tool. It’s about staying strategically viable as a leader in motion.
In the 304 Modern Leadership Stack, this is one of the 12 repeatable leadership muscles that drive momentum at scale. If your leadership system doesn’t reward curiosity, you’re not building for innovation; you’re building for fragility.
We see tech curiosity as a core leadership competency, because it shapes how a leader:
Embraces change under pressure
Model curiosity instead of resistance
Guides decision-making through uncertainty
Helps the team ask better questions (even if they don’t know the answers yet)
You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be a student.
Find yourself saying, “I don’t have time.” “That’s not my lane.” “The team has it handled.”?
These are the excuses leaders lean on while innovation moves on without them.
Here’s what a tech-curious leader does:
Asks how emerging tools affect people, not just the work.
Shows up to demos, not to approve, but to understand.
Admits when they’re out of their depth, and leans into learning.
When this competency is missing:
Change initiatives stall because leaders won’t champion what they don’t understand
Innovation becomes “someone else’s job”
Teams hoard knowledge or slow-roll adoption because no one’s leading from the front
When it’s present:
Cross-functional adoption moves faster
Innovation becomes a shared mindset
Leaders shift from control to inquiry, and teams follow suit
Let’s be honest, every leader has one. The tool, trend, or tech term they nod along with in meetings but secretly avoid.
Self-Coaching Question: What’s one tool, trend, or tech term you’ve been avoiding?
The Play (Your Move)
It’s easy to let tech fluency sit in someone else’s job description. But when leaders lead with curiosity, they make exploration safe for the whole team. This isn’t about catching up. It’s about showing up with questions, not ego.
This week, practice active tech curiosity:
Identify a tech concept, system, or trend your team is talking about, but you haven’t explored.
Ask your team: “Can someone show me how this actually works, start to finish?”
Attend a demo, shadow a user, or book a lunch-and-learn, not just to say you did it, but to understand.
Leadership isn’t “being the expert.” It’s modeling the courage to learn in public.
Dig deeper into Tech Curiosity on Let's Fix Leadership Podcast.
The Talent Strategy Playbook Edge (What’s Next)
Companion Podcast: Let’s Fix Leadership - Digital Curiosity
Let’s Reflect: What’s a tech topic you avoided too long, and what happened when you finally asked?
Coming Next: Issue #17: Expressive Credibility: Showing Up Real, Not Rehearsed
Let’s talk about why leadership that sounds real matters more than one that looks perfect.
Want to build tech curiosity into your leadership culture? Let’s design it into your competency stack. Book a session with 304 Coaching and build a team that’s adaptable by design.