Who You Need for Your Digital Journey
Many different
skillsets will be necessary for your organisation’s digital journey.
Digitisation has become
synonymous with computing technology and data. Smart lifestyle devices such as
phones, fitness trackers, refrigerators and cars are packed with unprecedented
computing power. They also have incredible bandwidth for gathering reams of
data. It’s not only “big” data, but “fast” data. In the 1990s, capturing data
on consumer or employee behaviour meant conducting surveys, interviews, focus
groups and data aggregation. Human beings plugged data into machines that spat
out charts and tables for them to analyse.
Now that we have a wealth of
real-time, and highly granular, information from the many digital products in
our lives, the key is extracting meaning from all of these data. This means
some new roles, and some added complications for old ones.
Executives and managers at the
forefront of digitisation who we recently interviewed stressed that the focus
today is less on “data” and “storage” than on “analysis” and “ideas”. But as
these managers explained, this has multiple implications for the way data are
mined, the skills and roles organisations need and who takes the lead.
Our findings in these areas form
the second article of a six-part series spanning our 10-point framework for the
digital journey In the first part of this series, we covered the mindset
element: Organisations need to think of digitisation less as a transformation
and more as a journey. We now move on to the people and skills – the
foundations for digital work – that organisations will need on this journey.
Chief
Digital Officer
Starting at the top of the
organisation, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) has emerged as the most
visible addition to the organisational hierarchy. While easily confused with
Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), CDOs connect technology to the core business
model while simultaneously aligning it with the marketplace and culture. The
ideal candidate, in other words, has a good awareness of technological
possibilities but must be able to make the connection to business
opportunities.
One CDO we interviewed saw
himself bringing “a little bit of the technology knowhow on the one hand and on
the other side, the business development knowhow.” Being able to understand
both sides and “speak their language” was crucial, he believed.
Another respondent with deep
industry expertise and technical experience cautioned, however, that “there’s
no one individual who understands enough of the whole business to be able to
make the right decision.” The CDO’s role is therefore largely one of
facilitation and orchestration, and particularly the integration of three
specific skillsets.
Quants, digital natives and suits
Our interviewees expressed demand
for three different types of people: “quants”, “digital natives” and “suits”.
The quants are those with math, deep programming and analytical skills. One
advertising manager described this as a shift from “Mad Men” to “Math Men”. In
many ways, this is the cornerstone of the digital skillsets that companies
need. People with programming and deep analytical skills will be in high
demand for the foreseeable future.
Digital natives are those well
versed with our digital world and digital lifestyles. While digital natives are
typically young, they can be found across age groups. They are people
passionate to learn how things digital are increasingly becoming integrated
with all facets of life. They are active users of many platforms from messaging
to video streaming, and preferably know a thing or two about coding.
One respondent told us that “you
need to have so-called digital natives who have grown up with this and who also
constantly follow it and have the open mindset to hopefully anticipate and
foresee changes in the future.”
Finally, organisations on
the digital journey still need “the suits”, people who understand business
plans, marketing, financial structures and operational processes. Suits can
monetise opportunities by connecting technological value to customer needs.
But when quants, digital natives
and suits work together, things can often get lost in translation. One banking
manager told us of his experience working with quants: “They were explaining to
me and showing me what the technology could do but they were not understanding
what the “use” of it was. It was like I was speaking Spanish and they were
speaking Arabic.” In other words, the gulf between the “coolness” of the
technology and the value to consumers can be dramatic.
Digital leadership
This places a burden on digital
leaders to integrate these diverse but crucial skillsets. One way is to seek
“unicorns”, high-potential mid-career types who have become acquainted with the
methods of the quants, digital natives and suits. But they are a rare breed.
Companies unable to deploy armies of unicorns must develop a collaboration
strategy instead. One manager reported that “we have company summits to help
them [engineers] understand: ‘This is that thing you’re working on and that
thing the person next to you is working on, you start putting those blocks
together and this is what it does for our customers.’” Unfortunately, many
companies have no systematic plan for collaboration.
Because unicorns are hard to
find, CDOs must either take responsibility for integrating digital and business
efforts, or create “enablers” to do so. Two key functions of these digital
leaders emerged from our research: brokerage and storytelling. Brokers connect
people and ideas throughout the company, providing a master repository of the
work at hand, essentially mapping activities to bridge collaboration. This
requires people who are actively plugged into various company networks, and who
stay on top of the movement of those networks, bridging people in the process.
Storytelling entails the provision of an ongoing narrative of digitisation work
to explain where things are and how they fit together. The CDO could be the
broker and storyteller or others could be nominated to fill these
responsibilities. In some ways, this is classic general management work, as one
manager told us: “I think it’s more important…to have specialised teams and a
general manager involved…who can actively manage all the different types of
specialists.”
In other words, the
management processes companies need on their digital journeys are not so much
“digital” but “social” and highly collaborative. The human and social systems
for crunching through data with speed and accuracy will be essential.
Facilitating collaboration and matching the skills of the technology
specialists with those of traditional business executives will be crucial for
capitalising on data. As our next article will show, how companies design their
processes will also mean the difference between success and failure in tracking
external change and adapting to it.
D. Charles Galunic is a Professor of
Organisational Behaviour and the Aviva Chaired Professor of Leadership and
Responsibility at INSEAD.
Read more at https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/who-you-need-for-your-digital-journey-6916?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=79b2a9c50b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e079141ebb-79b2a9c50b-249840429#38wu87CKXfkahek4.99
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