Digital Insights to Jump Start Learning

Hi Everyone,

My team and I are dedicating the next month to commemorate Digital Discovery in service of boosting digital awareness, adoption, and basic up skilling.? In the spirit of sharing and contributing to this learning ecosystem, I’m dedicating this blog to my most frequently used phrases and provocations.

1.????? ‘Start by starting’ – Do you recall what it felt like the first time you crossed the inflection point of not knowing how to ride a bicycle to then knowing how?? Leaning into ‘digital’ can often feel like those first-time learning moments.? The truth is that most things are ‘hard’ the first time we attempt them and get easier with practice and over time.? Digital is no different.? It’s a muscle we need to exercise to build strength and we all start somewhere.

2.????? ‘Are we serving digital or is digital serving us?’ – I use this phrase to re-center teams when we get lost in the shuffle of rabbit holes and need to reset back to what we are seeking to achieve and what digital is in service of.? If you ever find yourself running in place in a data exercise or trying to force fit a digital solution into a job task, this might be a situation where we are serving digital.? Digital serving us often looks like a path to desired outcomes with less time, less steps, and/or less difficulty versus the path without digital.? If the path seems unclear, it might help to rethink the compatibility of the problem statement and proposed digital solution.

3.????? ‘Behind every good AI is a human and behind that human is a wallet’ – I often find myself in conversations where people somehow believe AI will achieve extraordinary outcomes without human intervention and in absence of investment dollars to support its success.? While strategic, high volume computation is a real capability of AI that humans cannot easily match in a short time scale, the logic behind algorithms stem from humans setting them up and training them and humans supplying the data to make the algorithms achieve fit for purpose.? Accessing AI as a service might be low cost to users but somebody else spent the time and money to make this application available in service of their own business models or valuation reasons.? Context matters. Before embarking on an initiative using AI, think about the level of investment that you’re willing to make in terms of time, money, and people and the desired outcomes as defined by measurables like speed to result, level of heavy lifting freed up from the humans, efficiency gains, and/or value creation otherwise not possible.? This will keep you honest on the possible ROI on the endeavor.? And willingness to accept iterative rounds of failure might be a cost of doing business in this way.

4.????? ‘Don’t name the digital solution in the problem statement.’? I often cringe when I see problem statements to the effect of “how might AI do xyz?”? A good way to think about this concept is to acknowledge that the outcomes we seek in business actually haven’t changed.? The driver behind the thinking is that we seek to amplify our impact with digital to get to better results, quicker.? I often reframe in this way.? If you are asked to use AI to solve a problem but you find a different path that works for you, like using classical statistics, software, simulation or even automation technology, does it really matter how you got to the better outcome?? Not once have I seen a leader get bothered by the digital solution chosen that delivered an extraordinary outcome.? This is the insight.

5.????? ‘Data is the fuel that runs the car.? And 80% of the effort in a digital solution often sits with data.’? Digital success stories often sound sexy, but the path to get there involves a lot of heavy lifting around cleaning data, generating data, organizing data, validating data, and so on.? And of course, talented humans are behind the scenes working with this data.? Let’s celebrate the journey in addition to the destination.

Learning new things can be uncomfortable as we are often comforted by what we know (our strengths).? If you’re feeling uncomfortable in your journey with Digital, it’s a healthy tension that might be signaling growth.? Keep at it, one step at a time.? You will get there with consistency and curiosity.? This was my journey as well and I continue to learn with every new problem statement we encounter.? Rest assured, you are not alone.? I hope you found these insights as thought starters to boost your respective journeys.

Till next time, wish everybody happy learnings ahead.

Mike

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