essential technology literacy is quintessential

In a recent virtual round table with a diverse group of colleagues, someone asked me how often do we review our strategy for the Group and whether Technology has a prominent role in our execution plans.

My answer was swift in saying that our updated strategic tactics featured technology and digitalisation and provided our teams a framework to help deliver a resilient customer-centric, profitable and sustainable business.

I added that our framework was updated earlier this year after we had executed well on our previous plans despite the pandemic, financial restructuring, an industry downturn, a major cyber security attack, the war in Ukraine leading to a loss of a third of our business, an energy crisis in Europe, inflation and the successful transformational acquisition we made. I also mentioned that we relaunched initiatives around customer centricity and digitalisation this year to assess the current state and define an aspirational future to hopefully implement the recommendations in a phased approach.

Did I answer her question fully? Well, not exactly. But noting that, I promised to get back to her, so here is more.

The fact is that in looking at our updated framework, one can see that Technology will enable us to execute our tactics and deliver our strategic aspirations. Accepting that we are not a technology-forward organisation yet, the goal is to progress from an occasional technology-enabled organisation to a technology-augmented company first.

The goal is to progress from an occasional technology-enabled organisation to a technology-augmented company first.

In order to accelerate performance improvements, support innovation across the organisation, beat the competition, and foster key partnerships to build a more resilient customer-centric and sustainable business, our company can move up this technology-enablement ladder by developing plans that incorporate identifiable technologies while making sure we:

• Improve technology literacy and talent across the entire workforce and more importantly close that gap across the executive leadership and senior management teams for a clear understanding of the potential that technology may offer.
• Actively engage with customers to better understand their challenges and aspirations in order to invent innovative technology solutions and products that help them achieve those goals while we generate accretive value to all stakeholders.
• Consider more frequent reviews of strategic plans to adjust execution tactics with access to real time data and by staying timely informed of the changing external business environment and the exponential speed of technology offerings, rapid change and significant disruption.
• Make Agility a fundamental skill across the organisation to enable rapid sprints and emerging technology pilots with smaller cost-effective budgets taking into account affordability and then scaling up when metrics show high potential and help distinguish real value from hype.
• Remove organisational barriers, eliminate outdated practices and flatten traditional hierarchy to engage, empower and encourage bottom-up participation where good tech-inspired ideas can come from across all levels at the company.
• Make innovation and sustainability strategic goals and dedicate time to inspire a bolder range of strategic options for the organisation to improve competitive advantage and drive responsible and sustainable growth.

After the round table and as I reflected on her question, I remembered that in a 2018 blog, I wrote that ‘technology becomes obsolete as soon as it is introduced and automated workflows including cognitive machine learning environments are both fascinating and scary.’

Fostering a strong learning culture across any organisation will certainly improve technology fluency and competency, alleviate fear of what we don’t understand and help face multiple challenges to deliver a better safety, service and financial performance in order to build a more resilient, growing and prosperous business.

Readers are invited to share their insights and comments below.

Be safe and stay healthy.