Wield the digital I and T sledgehammer

You don’t need a team of superhumans to initiate digital transformation in your business. But your organization can benefit from hiring and nurturing the “right” people. How can you decide who the right people are??

Chapter 5 of Break the Wall: Why and How to Democratize Digital in Your Business provides the criteria to identify the right talent given your cultural and technological goals.?

Before jumping into this, it is worth recalling the Nested Adaptative Cycles (NAC) framework from Chapter 2. The gears initiating digital transformation are made up of real people in your organization who will try to expand the transformation to the entire company. Once you’ve understood this framework, have set your goals , and performed a gap analysis?of your “weak spots”, your organization is ready to start thinking about what people it needs to meet its technical and cultural goals.

?Technical goals are an important aspect of digital transformation and inform your organization’s hiring process. However, according to the authors of Break the Wall, it is also important to keep in mind the cultural changes that arise from digitalization. A digitalization dream team not only possesses solid technical skills, but also helps create a culture that magnifies digitalization efforts for your company, encouraging evidence-based ideation and action. So, what characteristics do your team and people need for the best digitalization process?

?

How to put together your dream team

1.????Cross-discipline expertise: Look for individuals trained in different disciplines. As Jon Hay of the Red Sox puts it: “We can cherry-pick a lot of the things that other industries are doing well and try and apply those things to our own business.”

2.????The best of both worlds– technical and business skills: Bridge the mindset difference between the urgency of business people and the long-term view of data scientists. How?

a.????Digital transformation team and data scientists should know internal and external customers to create urgency and motivation for transformation.

b.????Data scientists should sit side by side with their business counterparts for a healthier and more productive relationship, and greater customer and organizational impact.

c.????Data scientists should understand the firm’s business strategy, be included in its formation, and provide feedback on potential value creation (beyond technical feasibility).

3.????I- and T-shaped expertise: combine individuals with both characteristics within your organization.

a.????I-shaped: deep expertise in a single domain. Forbes gives Warren Buffet as an example, since he focuses intensely on how to improve his investments.?

b.???T-shaped: deep expertise in a domain and knowledge across multiple domains (disciplines, functions, departments and hierarchies). The same Forbes article considers Thomas Edison to be a “classic T”, given his interest in many topics other than science, including literature, music and history.

4.????Critical roles in organizational networks: Influential individuals in your organization can catalyze a mindset shift towards digital transformation through interpersonal interactions and “complex contagion”– a person is exposed to an idea from multiple sources over a period of time.?

With Organizational Network Analysis you can identify people who are central to dense sub-networks (person A) or who are at the intersection between subnetworks (person B). The following chart illustrates this pretty neatly.

?

Ideal individual characteristics

1.????Leadership complementarity: can the person work with and complement the leader(s) driving digital transformation? Watch out for overly simplistic job specifications that don’t consider how applicants can integrate with leadership.

2.????Skill relevance: HR should distinguish between coding and ML skills that are effective in isolation vs. data skills that can be applied as part of the digital transformation agenda.

3.????Credibility: the team should be able to overcome resistance to digital transformation through the emotional and psychological safety of other members of your organization.

4.????Plus:?

a.????Demonstrated interest in digital transformation and desire to improve processes

b.???Open mind, can adopt an experimental approach

?

HR Note: It is important that these criteria are shared with HR so that they become familiar with the type of applicant you are looking for to join your digital transformation process. Think of hiring in collective terms– this can help your organization put together the best team possible. Avoiding competition with “top” firms hiring unidimensional talent makes your recruiting process more cost-effective.

?

What about talent that’s already in your company?

?Don’t forget to include current employees in your digital transformation efforts! Resistance to digitalization often comes from incumbent managers and teams, who fear losing relevance and responsibility to digital technologies. According to the labor Economics literature, this could not only benefit your organization, but also society as a whole. Increased job polarization and job losses due to technology can be mitigated if companies choose to adopt retraining programs, rather than lay off workers and re-hire more technically-savvy ones.

What may this process look like for your company? Encourage cultural change among those who already know your company, and those who know how to begin projects, and influence the necessary people to get things done. Think about how much of what needs to be done requires new skills vs. how much change can be achieved by breaking the data and knowledge walls and training the right people. The image below summarizes this pretty neatly:

Intensely concentrated qualifications like boot camps and certificate programs can build technical skills and intra-company bonds needed in digital transformation. This is also cheaper than hiring from outside of your organization. Managers of several top companies support this type of recruiting. If you’re aiming to further digital transformation and you've made to the end of this post, what are you waiting for to wield the sledgehammer?