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Welcome to the Technology Translator. I'm Vic. Every episode we break down technology, cybersecurity, and AI into plain English for Australian business leaders. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the Technology Translator. I'm Vic. I've spent the last 11 years working in technology across software, cybersecurity, cloud, infrastructure, and IT services. And over that time, I've worked with organizations ranging from small businesses through to enterprise and government environments. In 2024, I had the opportunity to present at CyberCon, Australia's largest cybersecurity conference, on a topic that I believe well and truly does not get enough attention. Not cyber attacks, not artificial intelligence, not technology. Education. Because after more than a decade in this industry, I've realized something. And that is that most business leaders aren't struggling because they're not intelligent. They're struggling because no one ever taught them how to make technology decisions. And honestly, why would they know? Most people never receive formal education in technology. Yet today, they're expected to make decisions about cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cloud platforms, software investments, data privacy, digital transformation, and technology budgets. They're expected to approve the spend. They're expected to understand the risk. They're expected to own the outcome. But no one ever taught them how. And that's the gap that this podcast is here to fill. Now, before we finish today, I want to give you a bit of a preview of where we're heading. In the next episode, we're going to talk about starting a business in 2026 and the technology basics every business owner should understand. Not cybersecurity, not artificial intelligence, not enterprise architecture. I'm talking the absolute basics. Because one of the biggest mistakes I see is people spending weeks researching software while completely missing the foundations that actually matter. We'll talk about laptops, email addresses, domain names, websites, Microsoft 365 versus Google Workspace, password managers, cloud storage, and most importantly, ownership. Because one lesson I've learned over the years is that ownership matters far more than software. But before we get there, we need to talk about why this knowledge gap exists in the first place. So this is the problem no one talks about. Think about this for a moment. Most people running businesses, leading departments, sitting on executive teams, or serving on boards are over the age of thirty-five. Many are over forty-five. Most completed their formal education before cloud computing became mainstream. Before smartphones became part of everyday life. Before AI, before cybersecurity became a board level discussion, before businesses became completely dependent on technology. Yet those same people are expected to make decisions about cybersecurity investments, AI, cloud migration, data privacy, technology budgets, digital transformation, business continuity. And they're expected to do it confidently. And that's a pretty difficult position to be in, not because you're incapable, not because you're not intelligent, but because no one's actually ever taught you how. And there's a massive translation gap. And the biggest problems I see isn't the lack of intelligence, it's just the lack of translation. Technical teams speak one language, business leaders speak another. An IT team might say, we need to improve identity controls and implement conditional access policies. A business leader hears, we need more money for another technology project. A security consultant says, you have significant vulnerabilities in your environment. The CEO hears something bad might happen one day. The message gets lost, and not because anyone is doing anything wrong, but because no one is translating. And when translation doesn't happen, business leaders are left trying to make decisions about things they don't fully understand. And I think one of the biggest reasons this gap exists is because no one ever explained it in plain English. And honestly, I've experienced that myself. My path into technology wasn't through computer science or engineering. I completed two bachelor's degrees at university, a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Arts. I majored in public relations and politics with minors in marketing and sociology. In other words, I learned how to communicate, write, research, analyze information, understand people, and build business cases. I definitely did not learn technology. And then I started working in technology consulting, and that's where I got my first real shock. I would walk into meetings, expecting to hear conversations about business strategy and organizational challenges. Instead, I'd hear things like, we're doing a lift and shift from on-prem infrastructure to cloud, or we need to consolidate our identity platforms, or we need to modernize our technology stack. And I remember sitting there thinking, what on earth are these people talking about? I genuinely had no idea. When someone talked about moving from on-premise infrastructure to cloud, my understanding was probably not much different to what business leaders think today. I had a laptop, I had files, I had a USB stick. So surely moving something from one place to another couldn't be that difficult, right? I laugh about it now, but at the time I honestly didn't understand what sat underneath the technology I was using every single day. And then I started learning. Later in my career while working at Oracle, I got exposed to enterprise technology environments. And that in itself completely changed how I view technology. Because when you don't work in tech, everything feels simple. You have a laptop, you have email, you log into Microsoft, you open Word or Excel, you open a browser, you log into your CRM, you log into a finance system, everything just works. And at least that's what it looks like from the surface. And then you start looking underneath. And you realize organizations need systems talking to other systems. You need user accounts, permissions, security controls, governance, integrations, backups. You need processes around who can access what and when. And you need people managing all of it. And suddenly you realize there is an entire world operating behind the scenes that most people never see. I remember reaching a point where the more I learnt, the more I realized how much I really didn't know. And I think that's exactly where many business leaders find themselves today. They understand their business, they understand their customers, they understand their finances. But when technology conversations start going below the surface, it can feel like you've suddenly walked into a conversation in an entirely different language. A few years later, while I was pregnant with my daughter, I completed a diploma of project management. And that gave me my first real appreciation for the complexity involved in delivering technology projects. Stakeholders, governance, agile, waterfall, business requirements, technical requirements, risk management, delivery frameworks. And again, it was another layer of complexity that most people never see. And then came my MBA. And this was probably the biggest eye-opener of all. Most people undertake an MBA because they want to become better business leaders. They want to understand strategy, finance, operations, and leadership. And what surprised me was how little technology education was actually included. Across the entire MBA, there was only one technology subject available. One. At the time, I was already working in cybersecurity. Every day I was having conversations about cyber risk, privacy obligations, compliance frameworks, governance requirements, data protection, regulatory requirements, and executive accountability. And these weren't theoretical discussions, these were real conversations happening inside real organizations. And yet cybersecurity itself accounted for roughly half of one of these technology classes. About an hour of actual teaching. And that's when I started asking myself a question. If future executives, board members, and business leaders aren't learning this during their formal education, then where exactly are they supposed to learn it? Because we're asking leaders to make decisions about technology every day. We're asking them to approve budgets. We're asking them to manage cyber risk. We're asking them to govern technology investments. We're asking them to make decisions about artificial intelligence. Yet most have never been taught how. And that's when something really clicked for me. We often assume business leaders should know this stuff. But where exactly are you supposed to learn it? Because if someone completes school, completes university, builds a career, progresses into management, maybe even completes a master's of business administration, and still receives almost no practical education about technology decision making, then perhaps the problem isn't their individual. Perhaps no one ever taught them. One of my favorite sayings is you don't know what you don't know until someone tells you you don't know it. And for many business leaders, that's exactly where technology sits today. Not because anyone's incapable, not because no one's uninterested, simply because no one has ever translated it into a language that makes sense for them. And if someone who worked in technology, completed multiple degrees, and actively went looking for this information, still found a massive gap, what chance does anyone else have? And that's a question that kept on bothering me. And ultimately, it's one of the reasons this podcast even exists. So now before everyone gets upset, this isn't a criticism of IT teams. Most IT professionals are doing the best they can, but business has changed. Twenty years ago, technology was largely a support function. If the computers work, the internet stayed online, and people could do their jobs, everyone was happy. Today, technology influences almost every single business outcome. Revenue, operations, customer experience, compliance, productivity, risk. Technology sits underneath almost all of it. The challenge is that many IT professionals built successful careers being measured on reliability. Keep the lights on, fix the problems, make sure the business can operate. And that's exactly what organizations ask them to do. But organizations are now asking technology teams a completely different question. Not how do we keep things running, but how do we use technology to grow faster, operate better, improve customer experience, and reduce risk? That's a fundamentally different expectation. And that's why business leaders can no longer say, I trust my IT guy. And it's not because their IT team isn't capable, and not because their provider isn't doing a good job. But it's because the decisions being made today are business decisions as much as they are technology decisions. You don't need to understand every technical detail, and you don't need to know how to configure a firewall. You don't need to know how to write code. But you do need to know enough to ask better questions and to challenge assumptions, to understand risk, to recognize opportunities, because ultimately the accountability and the risk still sit with leadership. Technology decisions may be implemented by IT, but the outcomes are owned by the business. And so that's exactly why I've started this podcast. Not because I think every leader needs to become technical, quite the opposite. I think technology professionals need to do a better job of translating technology into business language, but the purpose of this podcast is simple. To help business leaders, managers, directors, and business owners understand enough technology to make better decisions, to ask better questions, to challenge assumptions, to understand risk, to cut through the marketing buzzwords, and to feel confident when technology conversations happen around them. Because technology isn't an IT issue anymore. It's a business issue. And whether you're running a company, managing a department, leading a project, or sitting on a board, you're already making technology decisions every single day. The question is whether you're actually being given the information you need to make those decisions well. So if there's one thing I'd like you to take away from this first episode, is this you do not need to become technical. You do need to become informed. The leaders who will thrive over the next decade won't necessarily be the most technical people in the room, but they will be the people who can bridge the gap between technology and business outcomes. And that's what we're going to do here. One conversation at a time. Welcome to the Technology Translator. Next episode, we're going to tackle something every business owner, entrepreneur, and startup founder will face. Starting a business in 2026, what technology do you actually need? What can wait? What should you spend money on? What should you avoid? And most importantly, who owns your technology? Because ownership matters more than software. I'll see you then. Thanks for joining the episode. If you do want to follow me on Instagram at all, you can find me under the Technology Translator. If you would like to email me, Vic at the Technology Translator.au And I guess I wouldn't be doing this properly if I didn't say, if you like what you hear, hit the follow button. There will be more of these episodes coming up.