When you ask people, “What does digital mean?” for one individual, it’s about data. For another individual, it’s about the technology. For others, it’s about governance and structure.

The article below got me thinking . . . 

Digital adoption accelerated during the pandemic and changed business forever. Now, organizations face pressure to make consequential business decisions quickly and in business areas that may have no previous experience with digital tech.

Though many organizations recognize the need to become more digital and data-driven, they often struggle to find, cultivate, and keep the talent—and the mindsets—needed to do so.

The digital mindset is not just about technical skills, although you have to have some technical skills. It’s also a way of thinking—a way of thinking about data, devices, and technologies as well as how we operate within and beyond the organization, WITH OTHER PEOPLE!

We all need working fluency in digital, NOT necessarily mastery. The article shares a great example. Non-native speakers of the English language only need 30 percent of what a native speaker has in order to fully contribute and participate in a global organization. If 12,000 words means mastery, about 3,500 to 4,000 means working fluency. 

Think about that . . .

For far too long we’ve worried “will machines replace us?” They won’t, BUT humans with digital skills will replace humans without digital skills. We need to figure out better how to use machines augment human creativtiy, collaboration and decision making.

All this discussion about digital may be exhausting, but one of the most interesting concepts in the article is that of “data exhaust”.

“Everything that we do creates data [or digital] exhaust that can be useful, particularly if the company is collecting the data exhaust systematically, analyzing it, comparing and combining it intelligently. Through data exhaust, organizations can discern who knows what, who knows whom, how to match the right people with the right set of knowledge in order to advance the organizational goals and identify where work is being duplicated”

Albert Einstein said “the world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

The source article is an interview with Tsedal Neeley, Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and author of a new book, “The Digital Mindset – What it Really takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI”

You can read the article here . . .

Thanks for reading