This was CS50

~ OR ~

“Why a middle-aged finance professional decided to take a coding course.”

If necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is the absentee father.

And (continuing the familial metaphor) let’s call digital transformation the over-achieving stepson.

The common trait among these family members can be boiled down to a single word: Productivity.

For management and business owners, productivity means getting more output from employees. For their part, employees may share this definition, or (if they take after dear old dad) they may be happy to complete their work in half the time and spend the rest of the day reading r/funny or arguing politics on Facebook.

Regardless of the motivation, productivity gains come down to doing more with less.

Which brings us to:

Hlade’s Law

“If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person — he will find an easier way to do it.”

That easier way, however, may involve a long, circuitous route. But never underestimate the resourcefulness of a truly lazy person.

Trust me on this.

You see, I have a career goal of reaching a point where I can sit at my desk every morning and read the entire Wall Street Journal from cover to cover. I want the actual paper -- Not this online stuff. I want to hold the outstretched newspaper in my hands while I sip my morning coffee, slightly bending it forward and looking scornfully over the top of the pages should anyone deign to interrupt me.

But I can’t do that now because I’m mired in bank reconciliations, payroll journal entries, and overly complicated, Rube Goldberg-inspired spreadsheets.

Oh the spreadsheets ...

Over the years, spreadsheets have become both the backbone and the bane of the finance profession. I’m not here to decry Microsoft Excel. I still use it more than any other application in my toolbox. But as a power user, I’ve come to understand its limitations.

There are myriad tools (Tableau, Power BI, dashboards, innumerable Excel Add-ins, etc.) that go beyond the base capabilities of spreadsheets, but there is still no one-size-fits-all application that applies in every instance. Even these advanced tools have their limitations. In the short term, the work to learn a new proprietary tool may not seem worth the effort – especially if the full benefit of the new application is uncertain or unclear.

Still there are repetitive tasks that eat up a portion of every day. To a lazy person, these tasks are akin to pushing the proverbial boulder up the hill time and time again.

In the 1996 movie “Multiplicity” Michael Keaton’s character tried to solve this problem by cloning himself. On the surface this seemed like a solid plan, but after extensive research I don’t believe cloning technology has reached the point where this is a viable option.

So what is a lazy man to do?

While I’m quite certain the world could do without another version of me, I feel like we could all benefit from a purpose-built android that handled my lightwork.

Robots in Action

Ehhhh ... Maybe robot technology isn’t quite there yet either.

But to those in the know, the solution to all your workplace woes lies in the dark art of computer science.

Seriously. There amidst all those esoteric words and phrases like "for i in range" and numpy and pandas and matplotlib and arrays lies Nirvana.

Remember how excited you were the first time you learned to make a pivot table in Excel or to animate a slide in Powerpoint? If you're at all like me, you were probably drunk on this newfound power for a full month and a half.

But those powers were so limited. Being able to do neat stuff in a Microsoft application is about as cool as being that one Wonder Twin from Super Friends whose only power was to turn into something water-based.

Imagine how Superman must have secretly derided those boneheads.

That's how developers look at you and all your fancy Excel knowledge.

But the great news is you don't have to be born on a faraway planet and find power from an alien sun to be able to use this magic.

All you need is the right motivation (necessity, laziness or productivity all work), and a commitment to be uncomfortable while you learn a new skill. Further, if you don't need an official credential or certificate to show off on LinkedIn, you can get started learning this new magic power for free.

Sites Offering Free Coding Courses

• Coursera
• edX
• Udemy
• Code Academy
• MIT Open Courseware

If going it alone on the Internet isn't your speed, check out your local university, college, or specialized technical programs like Nashville Software School. Or if you're looking for a broader program that provides a solid foundation and playbook for a complete digital transformation, I highly recommend the Harvard Business Analytics Program (HBAP).

It was the analytics program that gave me the confidence to take a deeper dive into computer science. After taking a course on programming and data science systems from Harvard professor David Malan (and others), I was inspired to sign up for his wildly popular CS50 course, which is available on campus and online (either through edX or as a course for credit through the Harvard Extension School).

Malan and the entire CS50 staff make the course accessible to everyone from those of us who've spent our careers working with developers to even complete novices. As a matter of fact, only about 10% of students enrolled in the on-campus course have computer science backgrounds. The course is challenging, but doable for anyone willing to put in the time and effort (for me this was about 12-15 hours per week).

While one computer science course isn't going to make anyone an expert in software and application engineering, it gives students an understanding of programming basics. Whether taking the course as an aspiring developer or as a manager who wants to better understand what is going on behind the curtain in the previously mysterious world of engineering, technology or R&D, the knowledge gained from this single course is transformational. CS50 exposes students to general computational thinking, programming languages, algorithms and data structures, databases, and web programming.

Regardless of industry or profession, these skills are immensely important in business as companies across the spectrum struggle with what many only know as a buzzword: digital transformation. For managers hoping to champion this change it is crucial to understand there can be no digital transformation without a fundamental understanding of the medium in which it takes place.

To this end, Malan and the CS50 team have even created "CS50 For Lawyers," which is less coding intensive than CS50, and aims to equip students with a deeper understanding of the legal implications of technological decisions made by clients. I hope this is a sign that other profession-specific courses are on the horizon. Because as much as some may be inclined to dismiss "digital transformation" as an overused buzzword, it is beyond time for managers who are late to the party to take it seriously.

It is easy for managers to assume they can just hire someone to handle this important business initiative while they continue to focus on running the business as they have for years. The danger in that approach, however, is that integrating the latest technology into business operations is not just another project. It is integral to the success of business today and in the future.

For mid-career professionals and managers who may not have kept up with the shifting technological landscape that surrounds modern business, it is time to look under the hood at the engine that drives your business. Only then can you make intelligent decisions about how and why to tune, enhance, or replace its component parts with better, faster and stronger ones.

Getting out of your comfort zone to learn a new skill can be difficult and unnerving. But if you're serious about streamlining business operations, enhancing productivity, and making your business as competitive as possible, it is imperative you broaden and modernize your skillset to match the technological reality of the business world.

With this newfound understanding and set of skills you'll see all of your business operations in a new light. From essential business functions to back office operations, every routine and ongoing task will appear as an area for potential process improvement. You'll see new ways to use software to achieve significant productivity gains.

How you use these productivity gains is up to you.

While I'm still nowhere near finding the time to read the Wall Street Journal at the office, I did manage to make it through the What's News section the other day.