Week 2: What is Digital, after all? And what does a digital leader do?

(Dillon, the new Chief Digital Officer at Adroit Zinc, has had a rough welcome to his new job, where, on the very first day, he has been informed that he’ll also be taking the helm of the IT organization. We pick up the action now at the start of his second week on the job …..)

“How did you come to be known as Pal?” asked Dillon. Palesh Wanchoo, a.k.a. the ‘Pal’, a senior operations executive at Adroit, occupied an office next to Dillon’s, and they had met on Dillon’s second day on the job. Pal was in his mid-thirties: thoughtful, soft-spoken, a mentor to young employees and go-to person for many within the organization.

“It’s a long story that started during my stay in the US almost 13 years ago. I landed in Dallas to work for Texas Instruments in a technical operations role. I went around and introduced myself as ‘Palesh’ to my American colleagues. Naturally, they found the name exotic and didn’t quite know how to say it. At the time, I met an Indian employee – a Sikh gentleman, actually – who went by the name of ‘Bob.’ He sat me down one day and told me bluntly that I had to find an American name if I harbored any desire to do well in the US. ‘My friend, you won’t amount to anything here,’ he said, ‘unless you Americanize yourself.’ His actual name was Balwinder, but he went by ‘Bob.’ He had done extremely well in the US.

“That was it. I started going by ‘Pal’ from that day, and most colleagues felt it fit me naturally since I had a predisposition to help others, to be a friend to whoever had to get something done.”

“And you’ve been a pal to me, too,” exclaimed Dillon. “On my very first executive committee meeting, I was lucky you’d been invited as an observer. If not for you, I would have messed up the names of every single leader. I am not much good at names, but I’m working on it.”

Later that afternoon, Dillon bumped into a visiting senior executive from the Mumbai office of Adtoit Zinc. This executive – let’s call him ‘A’ – led a large Africa-based organization of Metalist, the holding company of Adroit Zinc. “I hear you’re the new digital leader,” he said, smiling, “perhaps you can enlighten me: what exactly is Digital?”

“Digital means many things,” Dillon responded, “but to me, it it primarily means connected equipment. If we hook up critical equipment to what we call the Internet of Things, we can monitor the operation of the equipment, optimize its performance, and figure out ways to predict when the machine is likely to go down.”

“Okay,” said A after a studied pause, “but what is Digital about that?”

“We never had machines that were connected to the IoT – that’s the Internet of Things – before. Now we do. To me, that is the essential definition of Digital,” said Dillon.

“Yes, but what is Digital?” persisted A.

“Well, when we connect machines….,” started Dillon, and then stopped. “Excuse me, Mr. A,” he said. “I suddenly remembered I had an important meeting.”

When Dillon recalled this conversation to Pal later, Pal laughed heartily. “It’s just your luck that you’d run into good old Mr. A when he’s in the mood for a battle. He’s an old-timer, and likes to give smart, young know-it-alls a hard time if he can.”

“I’m not too young or too much of a know-it-all – at least I hope I don’t come across as such,” said a perplexed Dillon.

“Why don’t you do this?” suggested Pal. “Develop a one-liner, a neat definition of Digital. You see, most people don’t really understand Digital.”

"Let me see," Dillon responded. "Data and analytics and IoT have to be essentially part of Digital. Dashboarding, too - but that would be an extension of analytics, right?"

"Yes," replied Pal. "How about artificial intelligence?"

“Yes, that too," replied Dillon. "How about this? “Digital is a set of capabilities around data, analytics, connected machines and artificial intelligence that enable corporations to make more money, reduce costs and improve employees’ health and safety?”

“Excellent,” remarked Pal. “Most folks say Digital when they mean IT, even the technical folks.”

“Tell me about it,” said Dillon. “I met a senior leader yesterday who looked at me incredulously when I told her the field of Digital was rather new – at least using the definition of Digital as we just discussed. But she broke out laughing. ‘What do you mean by new?’ she asked. ‘Come now, even in year 1999 we had Digital where I worked. We had LAN, WAN, networking and all of those!’ A senior finance executive told me, ‘Oh yes, we need Digital, and fast. I have to work off Excel spreadsheets – it would be nice to use an ERP for some of that!’ And a logistics person told me, ‘Why, we’re already Digital! We’ve been scanning all our hard copies and saving those documents in an online folder!’”

Pal nodded. “You know the story of the elephant and the five blind men?” he asked. “Most business leaders’ understanding of Digital is like that of those five blind men.”

“One other thing I’m struggling with is explaining my role,” continued Dillon. “Not too many corporations have chief digital officers, unlike, say, chief information officers who’ve been around for a few years.”

“I see,” responded Pal. “But we can fix it. How would you define your role to the Chairman of Metalist Assets, if you had a chance?”

“I’d tell him I led the digital transformation organization at Adroit Zinc,” replied Dillon.

“How about this,” Pal asked: “‘I am the chief digital evangelist. I educate leadership on what Digital is and how we can leverage it to grow our business. I also define the company’s Digital vision and execute that vision.”

“Thanks, you’ve really lived up to your name, Pal,” said Dillon, genuinely glad he’d found a friend from whom he could bounce ideas. “I owe you for this.”

“My pleasure,” said Pal, smiling.

Dillon jotted down in his notepad:

1.      Digital is a set of capabilities around data, analytics, connected machines and artificial intelligence that enable corporations to make more money, cut costs and improve employees’ health and safety.

2.      I educate leadership on what Digital is and how we can leverage it to grow our business. I also define the company’s Digital vision and execute that vision.

----- (To be continued) --------

(The material above is a work of fiction, and only represents the author's personal views.)

?Week 1 Adventure: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/adventures-digital-leader-week-1-amitabh-mishra/

Principal characters in the serialized story:

Dillon D’Souza – CDO (Chief Digital Officer) – 38, educated at Notre Dame University and employed in the US for 12 years prior to return to India. Family man, fitness fanatic.

Easwar Iyer – CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and Dillon’s boss – 57, head of Adroit Zinc. A nationally-recognized expert in zinc mining and processing.

Frank Garg – CFO (Chief Finance Officer) – 43, chartered account by profession. Long-timer at Adroit Zinc and its parent holding company, Metalist Assets.

Omkar Patil – COO (Chief Operations Officer) / Business Head – 41, MBA with 15 years of operational experience at metal companies. Long-timer at Adroit Zinc and Metalist Assets.

Indu Krishnan – CIO (Chief Information Officer) – 37, IT professional who’s spent her entire career with Adroit Zinc. Brilliant programmer and nerd.

Palesh Wanchoo – aka ‘Pal’ – Director of Operations – 35, 10-year veteran of Adroit Zinc, mentor to many and CEO’s Mr. Fix-it.

The company: Adroit Zinc, based in southern India, one of India’s largest manufacturing companies.