Friday Reflection (No.36): No Digital, No Air
August 26, 2022
“Como quisiera
Poder vivir sin aire.
Como quisiera
Poder vivir sin agua”1
-Vivir sin Aire by Maná
In 1992, the Mexican pop rock band Maná released a tear-inducing ballad called “Vivir sin Aire.” For many Spanish-speaking youth, this song has been a heartbreak anthem.2 How do you find a way forward without the love that you considered to be essential to life (i.e., the love = air).
We are nearing the point where companies will be singing a similar anthem with regard to modern technology. Leaders that underinvest in digital will be more than heartbroken. They will suffocate.
(This image was developed by an AI tool called Craiyon.com)
In a previous reflection, I’ve outlined the digital acumen spectrum. This spectrum asserts that most organizational leaders are not digital technologists and therefore need to invest in learning, experimentation and hiring in order to move from Beginner to Advanced Digital Language Learners.
As Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley lay out in their book Digital Mindset, the path for leaders who are novices “starts with the courage to be humble, admitting what you don’t know and setting out on a path to learning it.”
At the same time, it is unrealistic to expect that senior leaders, who are not technologists, have the time to become subject matter experts in all things digital. What this means is that Beginners are investing in digital solutions for which they do not possess reams of understanding.
Aside from the lack of humility to admit what we don’t know, the second biggest risk for leaders when it comes to digital is lacking the patience for investments to fully form.
In these scenarios, the mistake that leaders often make is treating digital investments as they would a run-of-the-mill capital investment. While I wouldn’t advocate for leaders to look at digital investments without any sort of return-on-investment lens, I would also push leaders to take an additional lens to digital investment - the “air lens.”
What is the “air lens”? It means looking at digital solutions as the air required to keep their organizations alive over the long haul. From that viewpoint, it may lengthen the time horizon over which we are willing to experiment. At the same time, it also increases the urgency to find the digital technologies required to continue to breathe.
So what can leaders do to foster the patience required for digital investments? Here are a couple thoughts:
Place multiple bets. As novices, it is unlikely that leaders who are Digital Language Learners will pick the one winner. In fact, even experts struggle to do this. Given that, it is prudent to have at least 3-4 experiments that leverage different AI ecosystems (i.e., combinations of data, tools and statistical models.)
Partner with companies to augment capabilities. For leaders of companies that are not pure-play technology companies, the homegrown path to digital innovation likely requires more patience than any organizational leader can stomach. Many VCs invest in product-driven tech companies for 5+ years before they have any expectation of return. The path to accelerate progress is partnership. In some cases, this means acquisitions. In others, it means working with digital engineering firms that can take the time to understand the business strategy and available data and then help translate it into a set of digital initiatives.3
Double down on customer/client/beneficiary experience. In a 2022 survey, over half of companies indicated that improved customer experience is an area where they have seen a positive impact from their digital investments.4 If informed by the voice of the customer and their specific unmet needs, then these investments merit greater patience.
Some questions I reflected on this week:
What is one specific digital use case that I can strive to understand better in order to better serve my clients and teams?
Over the next quarter, what is one experiment that I can run to better leverage modern technology in my day-to-day work?
English translation is essentially - “How could I try to live without air. How could I try to live without water.”
In my early 20s, I can remember listening to this song riding the 2 train up to the Bronx and feeling like the world was ending over a broken heart…little did I know that in a few short months I’d be meeting the woman of my dreams who I would end up marrying and building an amazing life with.
Hexaware, Global Logic and Mindtree are big players that have these capabilities. At the same time, there are numerous industry specific platforms and experts that can be solid candidates for partnership.
Lots of digital insights in this recent piece published by EY/Parthenon.