During 2020, digital transformation initiatives helped businesses to stay afloat when the world was plunged into challenging and uncharted territory. 2021 is a time for businesses to build on what they put in place in order to thrive rather than simply survive. We touched on technology in our Essential Leadership Requirements for 2021, but felt it was worth highlighting some of the key artificial intelligence (AI) and workplace technologies that leaders are prioritising this year and exploring how they will impact our working lives. Here is what you need to know about AI and tech’s potential in the working world in 2021:
The AI Imperative
We have spent the past several years discussing ‘the future of work’ and the ways that technology will eventually shake up the workplace. But the fact of the matter is, developments such as COVID and constant global innovation have accelerated the timeline, and the future has now arrived. Going forward, the future we have been predicting and planning for will start to be accepted as the norm. The time has come to sink or swim, adapt or accept defeat.
At this point, the benefits of AI, Cloud, and other disruptive technologies have been discussed at length. It should no longer seem unfathomable that AI will touch every aspect of our lives in due course. We interact with it on a daily basis without even realising or thinking twice about it. The tech already lives in our phones, our smart speakers, our email, our social media feeds, our streaming platforms, and our online shopping baskets. It may already be embedded in features of the software you use at work or will likely be introduced soon.
Better Technology, Bigger Possibilities, and Buy-in Challenges
We can expect to see an even greater acceleration in the advancement and intelligence performed by technology during 2021.
What this means is that work will become ‘smarter’ as businesses adopt new technology to help enhance their practices, speed up their processes, gain in-depth insights into the needs of their customers, discover patterns, reveal anomalies, and make predictions and decisions. Given the advancement of AI and machine learning in the past year, and the developments still to come in the year ahead, AI is increasingly becoming a key driver of organisational performance. The organisations who are leading the pack in adoption are already reaping massive benefits in productivity, efficiency, cost and resource saving, and competitive advantage.
We have become a bit spoilt for choice when it comes to available tools and vendors. The benefit of this is that regardless of an organisation’s challenges or goals, there is likely to be a solution readily available to help. With automation able to handle the routinised and data-driven functions of the business, human staff are freed up from the mundane aspects of their role and able to focus on more meaningful work. They will also have more time to focus on the creative or strategic functions that technology cannot yet perform, this being a huge benefit for businesses which need to drive more innovation.
However, even though AI will reshape rather than replace most professional roles, there will almost certainly be discomfort or pushback from staff as their jobs change. Some may cling to the status quo and reject AI’s assistance, or feel threatened. The key here is for business leaders to offer their staff adequate support and preparation throughout the transformation process. This will likely involve offering retraining or upskilling opportunities to help staff develop future-ready skills and adjust to the evolving needs of the business. It is also crucial for leaders to serve as champions of change within their organisation. By increasing their own understanding of new technologies, business leaders can better address staff concerns, which helps to inspire confidence in the future of the organisation and its leadership.
Changing Expectations
2020 was a massive turning point when it came to our level of comfort with using digital interactions in our daily lives. Customers’ priorities and expectations have shifted after a year of living through a pandemic. Businesses closed their physical doors due to restrictions, so their customers flocked to their websites. As a result, there is a greater focus on providing effective, differentiated digital experiences than ever before.
We do not know how long the current restrictions will last, but as we look ahead to when life returns to some semblance of normalcy, it is likely that customers will no longer be satisfied with distinctly physical or digital experiences. Instead, business leaders need to prepare to offer their customers a blend of the best of both. AI can be used to offer customers a personalised experience that transitions seamlessly between the digital and physical environments, when allowed. Expect forward-thinking leaders to begin planning for this over the next several months.
Customer needs, behaviours, and expectations shift quickly and often. It is crucial for business leaders to stay on top of these trends in order to provide the experiences their customers expect and the products and services that will best meet their changing needs. It can be hard to keep track of these shifts, but AI tools make it easier track changes as they happen and gain deeper insight into their customer base. This will prove critical to business leaders as they try to move their organisation forward post-pandemic, and it is a benefit which leaders should factor in when considering adopting AI.
Smarter Strategy
Every industry has its leaders and its laggards, but most businesses today fall somewhere in the middle. These organisations and their leadership most likely understand that the world of work is evolving and that they need to adapt in order to survive. But as we start 2021, most of these organisations are still struggling with where to begin.
While having many vendors and tools in the market means that businesses have plenty of options, the drawback is that it can be difficult to know who to turn to. Conversely, with so many shiny tools available, it can be tempting to adopt whatever sounds the best or makes the most promises as opposed to the most effective tool for solving the problems at hand.
That is why it is so crucial for leaders to have a strategy in place. This should be the starting point for all digital transformation processes. Businesses undoubtedly have many challenges to overcome this year, but the specifics of those problems and the outcomes you are looking to achieve need to be identified first and foremost.
We have spoken in previous years of there needing to be a greater emphasis on having tech savvy executives in the C-suite to drive the change process, and we expect to see this accelerate in 2021. The shift of technology being the responsibility of the CIO or CTO will also continue to decline as more ownership needs to be held across many levels. Given that the impacts of new technology will touch every aspect of the organisation, it is crucial that the entire board understands the impacts, benefits, risks, and so on. Whether it is the CEO or CTO who leads the change, there needs to be a team of empowered and well-informed executive leaders driving the development of the strategy. It will be the responsibility of this team to define, expand, and shape the vision through effective collaborations with the workforce that creates alignment and buy-in throughout the organisation. Having the right skills, displaying the right behaviours and understanding how and what each person and process contributes is critical.
Investing in the future of work
Last year opened our eyes to just how much more beneficial and impactful technology can be in the workplace to remain competitive, increase employee experience and customer satisfaction. This year, leaders need to further expand their thinking to focus on how AI and technology can be used to help them get ahead rather than just stay afloat. Upskilling or retraining can help leaders deepen their understanding of AI while also developing the right skills to help inform the strategy and implement it.
It will also be vitally important for leaders to understand how AI and disruptive technology are impacting businesses across their industry and other sector, as well as learning how this technology is being regulated, and what the major trends are globally*.
Attending AI courses or programmes such as the Rialto AI Leaders Programme is a great way for executives to improve their relationship with AI, deepen their understanding of it, keep up with trends, and gain actionable insights that can then be applied to their business. They can then take the insights, skills, and knowledge gained back to their boardroom to create a strategy that leverages AI to its full potential.
As many executives begin to come to grips with AI, we expect 2021 to see greater investment, shifts in priorities, a bigger focus on digital skills, and smarter and more tech-driven strategies. Just as the idea of returning to a five-day in-office work week may seem old-fashioned to many of us now, we expect that by the end of this year, we will feel the same about not using artificial intelligence in our day-to-day practice. The fact of the matter is that the time has now come to sink or swim, and those who swim safely to shore after the major waves of the pandemic have died down will most definitely be those who leveraged AI to chart their path forward.
In this short video, Martin Barrett, Managing Director of Turner & Townsend Suiko, talks to Lesley Lindberg about some of the leadership challenges he has observed through the UK lockdown.
We know that digital is the new normal. As Nike CEO John Dinahoe has put it, the customer today is digitally grounded and simply will not revert back.
With more aspects of our lives incorporating digital, a strategic personal digital branding programme is now an essential component of a successful career plan. In a previous blog, we discussed the steps you should take in order to define your personal digital brand. This stage required you to think realistically and critically about your personal and professional talents, strengths, achievements, and aspirations. You took the time to determine your purpose, set out your short to mid term goals, audit yourself, and identify the key accomplishments, skills, and attributes you need to champion to align to future market needs. The next step is it to delve into the ‘digital’ element, and how you can begin to convey that personal brand online.
The ‘Digital’ Aspects of Personal Digital Branding
For many, their perception of a ‘personal digital brand’ may be limited to a social media presence. While it is arguably the area with the most opportunity for growth and experimentation, your social profiles are not the only place where your brand comes to life.
Your online presence needs to match who you are in every other setting and scenario of your professional life. Your personal digital brand identity should be felt in the text and WhatsApp messages you send to your contacts. It needs to come across in the email communications you have with partners and prospects. Is the tone consistent? Do you convey similar messages across your digital footprint? This echoes the message in the earlier blog about consistency being the key to authenticity. Your personal digital brand will only work for you if it truly reflects who you are and what you have to offer professionally and how relevant it is for the future market trends and needs.
Social media is not the only digital element of your personal digital brand, but it is definitely where it will be leveraged and showcased the most. It is a tool that is proving too vital to ignore. According to a recent report, the most social media-savvy CEOs had a 5% higher Glassdoor rating, with their companies being rated 3% higher, too. C-suite leaders from some of the world’s top brands use social media daily to advocate for their organisations, establish themselves as industry voices and thought leaders, manage reputation, and build their own personal digital brand. To see some strong examples of this in action, visit the LinkedIn profiles of Walmart Inc’s Doug McMillon, Nasdaq’s Adena Friedman, or Royal Dutch Shell’s Ben van Beurden.
Looking at how other leading executives are using their social media to leverage their personal digital brand online should provide you with inspiration for developing your own strategy. Here is some guidance from us to get you started.
Deciding which Social Medium is right for you
We recommend that you choose one platform and focus your efforts on actively engaging your shareholders, employees, prospects, partners, industry peers, and the general public there. You do not need to maintain a presence on every single site. In fact, if you allocate your efforts properly, you can usually secure better results from a single platform than you would from attempting to be everywhere at once.
Typically, LinkedIn and Twitter are the two most popular platforms for professionals. LinkedIn is the most popular platform for corporate leaders with 44% of CEOs having some sort of presence, while Twitter is second choice with 15%. The choice of which platform to use may come down to personal preference. Some executives may feel overwhelmed by the range of available features on LinkedIn, while others may find Twitter’s character limit to be a bit challenging for detailed thought leadership.
There is a vast amount of data available about social media usage, segmented by a wide range of demographic and psychographic characteristics. If you know who you want to target, you should definitely look into where you have the best chance of reaching them and how they actually use their chosen platforms. It will vary by site.
It is called social networking for a reason, so ask your peers, colleagues, and contacts what platforms they use and how they use them. Check out your competitors’ profiles to see how they exploit social media. If there is a person you particularly admire, learn from their profiles and note what you believe they are doing right.
Even if you already have a social media presence, there is always something you can learn from your peers. Social media is not static. Platforms, trends, and user behaviours change regularly, and your strategy will need to evolve.
Top Tips for Social Media Engagement
Here are some general social media guidelines to follow for those wanting to build their own personal digital branding presence
- Don’t Overwhelm Your Audience: The point of maintaining a professional social media presence is to get in front of your audiences, but there is a fine line between under sharing, oversharing, and just the right amount of frequency. You will of course want to post frequently enough to be seen and considered ‘active,’ but not so much that your posts become irritating and off-putting. If your posts clog their feeds, you risk your audience tuning out or unfollowing. A good rule of thumb is to post three to five times per week, and no more than twice in one day.
- Build an Online Community: Treat your social media community the way you would treat your wider digital or offline contacts. Follow or connect with your colleagues, stakeholders, partners, contacts, and prospects. If you attend an event or speak at a conference, connect with the other attendees or speakers. Also, be sure to follow key figures in your specific industry, news sources, or prominent companies. Interact with others’ content by liking, resharing with commentary, or leaving value-add or encouraging comments. LinkedIn has a Groups feature, which allows professionals to connect with and share insights with professionals they share interests or characteristics with. There is a group for almost everything. Start by exploring relevant groups for your industry or job function, and then look into others related to your geography, education, or other characteristics (i.e. ‘Women in Business’ groups)
- Be Personable: When reaching out to new connections on LinkedIn, be sure you always customise the invitation. These requests feel much more personal and are less likely to be ignored or denied. Your invitation should briefly introduce the contact to you, highlight any common ground you may share (i.e. attendance at a recent conference, group membership, mutual contacts), and close with a friendly message. Just as you would not lead with a sales pitch when meeting face-to-face, you should not attempt to sell overtly in these connection request messages.
- Content is Key: Ensure that your content reflects the goals you set for yourself and the personal digital brand image you defined early on in the process. Your content should not be self-promotion, and to be considered a thought leader you need to contribute to the greater conversation. Share third-party articles relevant to your industry job function, new regulations, or pertaining to other areas of interest or causes you champion. However, instead of simply sharing links, be sure to add some analysis or commentary. If allowed, keep your followers updated about the projects you are working on, the events you are attending and participating in, or the latest news from your company. Your content should reflect that you are tuned into what is going on in your industry and you have valuable insights to offer. Your followers should be able to get a good sense of your interests and positioning based on the content you curate.
- Pay Attention to Your Audience: Keep track of what’s working and what isn’t for your audience. What types of posts resonate the most or earn the most engagement? What time of day does your audience seem to be most active? Do not be afraid to experiment with different times and alternative types of content until you find what works for both you and your followers.
Your hard work in the early stages of digital personal branding will start to take a concrete shape once you begin applying the principles of your brand online. It will require trial and error, but so long as you remain authentic and stay focused on your goals, maintaining your brand will become a natural and integral part of your regular workday activity and attract opportunities you seek.
Don’t let complacency stall your career
Between a global pandemic, a double-dip recession, ongoing digital transformation and more, navigating an executive career move is proving to be both more complex and riskier across every sector. The world is changing around us, presenting new challenges and opportunities every day.
Some executives who may have been resisting digital transformation have had to quickly pivot in order to stay operational and competitive. Meanwhile, those who have been pushing for change in their organisation may suddenly find that they now have the internal support and resources needed to achieve their vision after facing periods of pushback. Some executives will unfortunately be made redundant, while others may feel bogged down by an organisation that is deeply concerned with tightening the purse strings.
Research indicates that in today’s world, the average person has five careers throughout their life which rarely follow a linear direction, instead taking diagonal or horizontal routes. This has been a growing trend, as professionals no longer feel obligated to remain in unfulfilling roles and have an abundance of opportunities for reskilling and changing course. Sometimes, these changes happen due to a desire to pursue a passion or find a more satisfying role. Alternatively, executives may change direction as a means of self-preservation, finding a new path before being made obsolete by plateauing organisations, new technology, automation or other threats. Many executives will be feeling these pressures in the current digital-driven climate, as artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies reshape the business landscape.
With new challenges come new opportunities and dilemmas for professionals whose current situation no longer suits their career path, organisation, or industry. These professionals must decide whether to stick it out in their current career trajectory, or to twist and change course towards something new, fulfilling and future ready. But when faced with such a massive dilemma, how do you determine your next step?
Establish Your Priorities
Circumstances are not created equal, and every executive has their own set of personal and professional considerations. When deciding your next step, it is crucial that you understand your own individual circumstances. Perhaps you have fiscal or familial obligations that you need to fulfil. Maybe your hand has been forced due to changes to your role or within your company or industry. The factors driving you to change course will absolutely play into the decision-making process and should not be an afterthought.
The most important consideration to make involves your own personal and professional fulfilment. In our recent blog on developing a personal digital brand, we discussed the importance of determining your ‘Why’ when attempting to understand who you are as a professional. The same principles apply here. Having a clear idea of who you are professionally, what skillsets you’ve gained that will add value, what is important to you, and what goals you would like to achieve will help you assess whether or not you are receiving the level of fulfilment you need from your current career path. You need to ask yourself what your objectives are in order to continue to be successful and fulfil your ambitions. What is it that will satisfy you personally? What do you need to change or find in order to achieve that goal?
Being fully aware of your personal brand and how you compare with those in the same playing field will be a major advantage here. You will have a better sense of what your skills are, what you enjoy doing, and what you bring to the table. You will also be able to shape what upskilling, reskilling or cross-skilling may be required. This self-awareness is key for deciding your place in the evolving landscape. For example, you may lack tech savviness, but are a gifted creative or strong strategic thinker. Instead of scrambling to adapt to new technology, you may choose to seek out a role that plays to your strengths. An honest assessment of your own skills, passions, and abilities will help you to ascertain what you have to offer, what you want to do next and where the gaps might be for you to compete given prevailing market trends.
Navigating a career in the face of technological advancement
At Rialto, we advise our clients to consider all of their options when it comes to career progression, whilst being increasingly mindful of the role that technology is playing in the future world of work.
For some, a career transition involves taking a step back to reassess your skillset and what you can offer your industry. This usually means allowing automation and machines to do what they are designed for and to take over the space you previously occupied. This does not mean you are regressing or bypassing innovation. Rather, stepping in this direction involves narrowing in on your talents, skills, and passions in order to develop a specialisation that is not currently serviceable with automation. This specialisation may fall into a field where there is no feasible business case for implementing new technology, or where a human could potentially be more knowledgeable. The focus can be on a skills gap that machines cannot currently fill. There are niche pockets within every industry that are not currently hot targets for mechanisation, and while some of these niches will stay this way, others may become targets later on. Professionals who step in this direction typically pivot to roles such as those requiring creativity, empathy, or vision. Developing a foothold in these pockets presents an interesting opportunity later down the road for professionals to help drive the development of technology and tools in their specialty.
For others, stepping forward to drive the development of future technology and tools is the answer to immediate progression. While this sounds technical, it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Technology and automation are a huge asset to businesses, but it takes human minds to understand the ways that technology benefits specific areas of the business. This direction can involve taking on more transformational, strategic or advisory roles but equally be more hands-on and require you to work directly with the solutions and technologies. You may lend your expertise to overseeing the work carried out by automation, essentially managing the technology to ensure it runs smoothly and accomplishes what it’s meant to. Or you may need to push aside any previous hesitation or cynicism and fully embrace new tools in your existing role. Machines are incredible things, but even with all of their incredible capabilities, they still require some human involvement to ensure the outputs are right. By choosing to head in this direction you are acknowledging your acceptance of the more hybrid workforce and demonstrating an openness to embrace these tools for the success of the organisation.
As the old saying goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” With the amount of change that is taking place daily, we as professionals cannot possibly expect that our careers will not need to evolve as a result. The worst response is to resign ourselves to complacency. This does not always necessitate a full-on career switch. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of thinking differently about what is happening, what is possible, and what role you would like to play in a world being reset.
Reflecting on the ways we worked 15 years ago feels like gazing into another world. If you wanted to check your emails out of hours, you didn’t have a smartphone to do it on; you used a Blackberry or a mobile made by Nokia. We had yet to truly reap the business benefits of social media, as at the time Facebook was just for students, Twitter was still a year from introduction, and we wouldn’t post to Instagram for another five years. Jobs like SEO specialist, UX designer, Cloud services manager, and more simply did not exist. We even sent faxes still – and regularly!
That was 2005, which simultaneously feels like yesterday and eons ago. If that much change can happen in the workplace within a period of 15 years, imagine what the next five, ten, or 15 years will bring.
The truth is, the future of work is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed. Certain industries and sectors have adapted quickly to new technology and have been successfully implementing it for a while now. Even in the laggard industries, there are certain companies that either had the foresight or the budget to adapt quickly, and now find themselves leagues ahead of their peers and competitors as a result. But soon enough, those laggards will be faced with a sink-or-swim ultimatum to either catch up or be left behind for good.
It can be extremely hard to prepare when you aren’t sure what lies ahead, or how to get there. Many times, it is a team and stakeholder alignment issue of getting people onto the same page quickly – and understanding all voices. In the face of so much disruption and rapid change, how can you scale top line growth at the right margin, ensure high performance, improve employee wellbeing and customer experience, or develop and successfully execute new business strategies? The answer lies in Augmented Intelligence – Consulting (AI-C).
Defining the ‘Future of Work’
Before you can prepare for what’s next, you need to understand exactly what that entails. Many people hear the term ‘future of work’ and envision a world run by robots or a scene from a science fiction film. While elements of increased automation will play a key role in the future workforce, what we’re discussing here is much less drastic as humans and robots work together to form hybrid working. As mentioned, the future of work is already here; it’s just that your organisation may not be there yet.
Essentially, the future of work involves humans and technology working together in partnership to accomplish tasks in a more agile, effective, and efficient manner than ever before. Smartphones, social media, and other technology have become commonplace not only in the office, but in our everyday lives. As a result, today’s customers and multi-generational workforce increasingly value personalised, immersive data-driven experiences.
Business leaders have access to more data than they ever have before. In fact, the total amount of data that is created, captured, copied, and consumed globally is forecast to reach 59 zettabytes in 2020 and more than double to 149 zettabytes by 2024[1]. Businesses are beginning to understand the value of the data they generate and collect, but many are struggling to use it properly. Technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) can help to make sense of and use this data in ways we never would have imagined possible previously.
New software and tools are introduced to the market daily, all of which aim to turn available data into insights or to accomplish a specific task. There are tools available that can monitor every online conversation about your brand to provide insight into customer attitudes, write content for you, handle your hiring, identify sales opportunities, and so much more.
Surely, tech-driven environments require tech-focused solutions. But there’s so much more to this than simply adopting some new tools and updating your equipment.
Securing increased Alignment with AI-C
The humans involved in the change process are far more important than the technology. Most change or transformation programmes fail because of misalignment, with research sources quoting between 50% to 84% over the last 25+ years, which negatively impacts careers and business progress. The way that leaders think and manage their teams needs to become more agile and flexible in order to keep up with the rate of change and effectively execute new growth strategies.
It’s ‘easy’ for the C-suite to decide to sign off a transformation process, but most of the implementation will happen at every level of the business. A typical team raises on average 167 opinions on a given topic and 61 barriers as to why it can’t be done. If there is discord, lack of clarity, or miscommunications throughout the business, the change process has a very high potential for failure.
This is where Augmented Intelligence – Consulting (AI-C) can be massively advantageous. This advanced method of management consulting combines concepts from Harvard academics Professor Chris Argyris (Action Science) and Professor Thomas Schelling, a Nobel Prize recipient (Game Theory), as well as SchellingPoint’s applied research into Relational Network Analysis. It has been proven in over 500 real-world business projects and applications. This breakthrough in change management and leadership methodology is also now being taught at some of the US and UK’s leading business schools including Wharton, Warwick and Cornell.
Through this ‘lean’ consulting process, AI-C helps business leaders produce a credible and complete roadmap to address today’s business, cultural and digital transformations. This can include the creation of a new target operating model, cost reduction, efficiency, productivity requirements and strategic growth. AI-C gives everyone in the organisation a voice in co-shaping change and optimises alignment to future goals. It accelerates business-focused learning, reduces bias, increases collaborative thinking and insights in relation to securing future business goals. As a result, AI-C helps leaders adapt and increase the speed of decision-making to rapidly changing marketplaces, overcome increased competition, improve processes by implementing automation or next-generation technologies, determine policies, and develop new market-winning business strategies.
One of the key benefits of AI-C is its cost-effectiveness. It is delivered predominantly through virtual dialogues without the need for in-person meetings or workshops, which is ideal in the COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 world. The average timeline for an AI-C project is 6-8 weeks but it can be completed in as little as 3 days. Therefore, the AI-C process is concluded as efficiently and effectively as possible for significantly less cost than deploying internal resources and results in a more reliable, valid and endorsed set of actions to deliver business outcomes.
Business has come a long way in recent years, and there’s more change yet to come. While some businesses thrive ahead of the curve, others risk getting left behind indefinitely if they do not adapt to the rapidly changing marketplace. It’s clear that in this face-paced and increasingly competitive space, the old tools and methods of leading will not suffice. AI-C can help business leaders undergo their transformation process as effectively as possible by ensuring organisational alignment. In a time where leaders and workplaces need to become more agile to succeed, AI-C is fit for purpose for the digital age and gives both internal/external stakeholders more of a voice in tackling any business challenge.
We invite you to join us for our Future of Work virtual seminar on 18th November. Associate Director Russell Beck and Rialto Director Richard Chiumento will examine the global trends impacting the workplace and providing useful insights into how organisations and employees can futureproof themselves. Register here
Additionally, to learn more about our AI-C methodology, you can join Associate Directors Lesley Lindberg and George Mystkowski for our virtual seminar on 3rd December where they will be sharing how one Company used AI-C to help shape and implement new and high performing working practices following COVID-19 challenges. Register here
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/871513/worldwide-data-created/
Only a small number of organisations have been able to successfully scale their digital initiatives beyond the experimentation and piloting stages, a study finds, which identifies six barriers which must be navigated on when embarking on a digital transformation journey.
Business analyst Gartner contends that this is because digital transformation requires more than simply investing in the latest technology – it demands significant changes to culture and systems.
“To change an organisation designed for a structured, ordered, process-oriented world to one designed for ecosystems, adaptation, learning and experimentation is hard,” said Marcus Blosch, research vice president at Gartner.
“Some organisations will navigate that change, and others that can’t change will become outdated and be replaced.”
The six barriers and Gartner’s advice on overcoming them are outlined below:
1 A change-resisting culture
“Culture is organisational ‘dark matter’ – you can’t see it, but its effects are obvious,” said Blosch. “The challenge is that many organisations have developed a culture of hierarchy and clear boundaries between areas of responsibilities. Digital innovation requires the opposite: collaborative cross-functional and self-directed teams that are not afraid of uncertain outcomes.”
Those aiming to establish a digital culture should start small: define a digital mindset, assemble a digital innovation team, and shield it from the rest of the organisation to let the new culture develop. Connections between the digital innovation and core teams can then be used to scale new ideas and spread the culture.
2 Limited sharing and collaboration
Digital innovation with its collaborative cross-functional teams is often very different from what employees are used to with regards to functions and hierarchies and resistance is inevitable.
“It’s not necessary to have everyone on board in the early stages. Try to find areas where interests overlap, and create a starting point,” said Blosch. “Build a first version, test the idea and use the success story to gain the momentum needed for the next step.”
3 The business isn’t ready
Many business leaders are caught up in the hype around digital business. But when the CIO or CDO wants to start the transformation process, it turns out that the business doesn’t have the skills or resources needed.
Gartner recommends focusing on the early adopters with the willingness and openness to change and leverage digital. But keep in mind that digital may just not be relevant to certain parts of the organisation.
4 The talent gap
Employees need new skills focused on innovation, change and creativity along with the new technologies themselves, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT)
“In smaller or more innovative organisations, it is possible to redefine individuals’ roles to include more skills and competencies needed to support digital,” said Blosch. “In other organisations, using a bimodal approach makes sense by creating a separate group to handle innovation with the requisite skill set.”
5 Current practices don’t support the talent
“Some organisations may shift to a product management-based approach for digital innovations because it allows for multiple iterations,” said Blosch. “Operational innovations can follow the usual approaches until the digital team is skilled and experienced enough to extend its reach and share the learned practices with the organisation.”
6 Change isn’t easy
Developing platforms, changing the organisational structure, and creating an ecosystem of partners is challenging.
According to Gartner, enterprises should build the organisational capabilities that make change simpler and faster. To do that, it said, they should develop a platform-based strategy that supports continuous change and design principles and then innovate on top of that platform.
Successful collaborations drive the success, advancement, performance, and growth of organisations. However, only 8% of polled business leaders say their collaborations achieve outcomes on-time, on-cost, and on- benefit. This waste is the Cost of Collaboration, and comprises the needless costs associated with poor meetings, misalignment, rework, avoidable delay, secondary saviour projects, and the difference between what a group actually realises and the original stated aims.
The methodology that underpins our Augmented Intelligence-Consulting (AI-C) programmes was developed in response to the reoccurring question in business of why groups of intelligent, knowledgeable, and well-meaning professionals continue to fail so often to successfully form and work around a shared business imperative. The presence of a universal collaboration process to enable reliable, predictable, and efficient collaborations was the research hypothesis. What was found was a common gap in knowledge of how to facilitate a collaboration from identification of a new need to sustained positive impact. Beginning with identifying what needs to be discussed, in what sequence to have the discussions, through how to conduct them, collaboration leaders have until now used self-learned methods. AI-C’s research, applied to over three-hundred different collaborations in a myriad of industries and contexts, reframes the approach to leading a group endeavour that leads to project success faster, with greater alignment and with desired results.
Seven in 10 workplaces will integrate artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of chatbots and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) by 2021 to assist employees’ productivity, a new study finds.
“Digital workplace leaders will proactively implement AI-based technologies such as virtual assistants or other NLP-based conversational agents and robots to support and augment employees’ tasks and productivity,” said Helen Poitevin, senior research director at Gartner.
But the report warned that past incidents have shown that poorly designed assistants cause frustration among employees, sometimes prompting bad behaviour and abusive language toward the VPA.
“This can create a toxic work environment, as the bad habits will eventually leak into interactions with co-workers,” continued Poitevin.
The report points to recent experiments which have shown that people’s abusive behaviour toward AI technologies can translate into how they treat the humans around them.
As a result, Gartner predicts this development will prompt 10 per cent of organisations to add a digital harassment policy to their workplace regulation.
When establishing VPAs in the workplace organisations must also train the assistants to respond appropriately to aggressive language.
“They should also clearly state that AI-enabled conversational agents should be treated with respect and give them a personality to fuel likability and respect,” added Poitevin.
“Finally, digital workplace leaders should allow employees to report observed cases of policy violation.”
According to Richard Chiumento, director of Rialto Consultancy, this clearly demonstrates why leaders cannot not underestimate the major change programme that is required when it comes to embedding and integrating new technologies like AI and robotics into the workforce. “And there must be real depth and commitment to this change,” he said. “Few would forsee the potential side-effect of fuelling bad behaviour elsewhere in the workforce. This demonstrates new processes, methods of working and strategies need to be clearly thought through and even, if it is impossible to predict some outcomes, leaders must be alert to the unexpected.”
More than half of technology CEOs surveyed globally (54 per cent) consider that a “return to territorialism” poses the greatest risk to their organisational growth, according to a new report by KPMG.
KPMG’s tech industry CEO outlook (#tech #CEOoutlook) canvassed the views of 104 tech CEOs globally on a range of key topics, among them, territorialism, growth, cyber and trust, artificial intelligence (AI), customer centricity and millennials.
The research also identified five “evolving forces” that are continuing to “raise the bar” for tech CEOs which are: drive for growth; visionary leadership; relentless customer centricity; technology for social good; and reimagining the workforce of the future.
Despite these concerns over issues like the UK’s exit from the EU and renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), tech CEOs are confident of their companies’ ability to outpace the tech sector and the global economy. Three per cent of CEOs expect their top-line revenue growth to exceed five per cent over the next three years, while half (49 per cent) indicate it will be between 2 per cent and 5 per cent, and 48 per cent indicate it will be less than 2 per cent.
Over the next three years, 42 per cent of CEOs predict they will expand their company’s headcount by between six per cent and 10 per cent and 43 per cent say they will expand less than five per cent.
“The rise of nationalism and affiliated global economic tensions are among factors bringing caution to revenue growth expectations. Still, nearly nine out of 10 tech CEOs remain confident in the growth prospects for their company,” said Tim Zanni, global and US technology sector leader, KPMG.
“Tech CEOs are focused on profitability and investing in technology and their people, as well as considering new business models.”
Two thirds (64 per cent) of CEOs agree that agility is the new currency of business and when it came to visionary leadership seven in 10 are personally prepared to lead their organisations through radical transformation of existing operating models to maintain competitiveness.
Meanwhile, on the issue of technology for social good, more than one third of respondents (35 per cent) report they are struggling to link their growth strategy with a societal purpose for their company.
“There’s a growing expectation for tech leaders to link their strategies with technology for social good. It’s important that CEOs communicate a clear and consistent strategy about their organisations’ vision, and beliefs, and how their strategy is impacting their customers, employees and society at large,” added Zanni.
Individuals may be more accepting of the inexorable rise of artificial intelligence (AI) at work but organisations are not doing enough to help employees embrace AI and that will result in reduced productivity, skillset obsolescence and job loss, a new study warns.
According to a survey of HR leaders and employees from Oracle and Future Workplace, an overwhelming majority reported they were ‘ready’ to take instructions from robots at work which directly correlates with their familiarity of AI technology at home.
The report, AI at Work, which quizzed 1,320 HR leaders and employees, found that while people are ready to embrace AI at work, only six per cent of HR professionals are actively deploying AI and one quarter of employees (24 per cent) are using some form of AI at work. This contrasts starkly with 70 per cent of respondents using some form of AI in their personal lives.
To determine why there is such a gap in AI adoption when people are clearly ready to embrace AI at work (93 per cent would trust orders from a robot), the study set out to examine HR leader and employee perceptions of the benefits of AI, the obstacles preventing AI adoption and the business consequences of not embracing AI.
“As this study shows, people are not afraid of AI taking their jobs and instead want to be able to quickly and easily take advantage of the latest innovations,” said Emily He, SVP, human capital management cloud business group, Oracle.
“To help employees embrace AI, organisations should partner with their HR leaders to address the skill gap and focus their IT strategy on embedding simple and powerful AI innovations into existing business processes.”
Despite its clear potential to improve business performance, HR leaders and employees believe that organisations are not doing enough to prepare the workforce for AI. Respondents also identified a number of other barriers holding back AI in the enterprise.
The vast majority of HR leaders (90 per cent) are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI as part of their job and to make matters worse, they are not currently empowered to address an emerging AI skill gap in their organisation.
While half of employees (51 per cent) are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI and 71 per cent believe AI skills and knowledge will be important in the next three years, nearly three quarters of HR leaders (72 per cent) noted that their organisation does not provide any form of AI training programme.
“AI will enable companies to stay competitive, HR leaders to be more strategic and employees to be more productive at work,” added Dan Schawbel, research director at Future Workplace.
“If organisations want to take advantage of the AI revolution, while closing the skills gap, they will have to invest in AI training programmes. If employees want to stay relevant to the current and future job market, they need to embrace AI as part of their job.”
