How much should successful modern executives, managers and employees know about information technology? Should they be self-sufficient with Microsoft Office? Capable of managing a stable work-at-home environment? Familiar with the basic purpose and disciplines of SAP? Aware of emerging applications within their industry or profession? How important are these issues anyway?

Over the last few years, we have been talking about the emerging double-deep workers, individuals skilled in not just their particular job function but also the relevant information technologies. From this perspective, it's easy to see that the IT know-how that a marketing person needs is different from a financial analyst, which is different from an office manager, which is different from a scientist. All of these jobs require a baseline IT fluency, but their ideal IT skill sets vary as widely as their roles.