Imagine a workplace where both human and digital resources fluidly and autonomously reconfigure themselves in response to dynamically changing business needs. How can an enterprise develop such digital dexterity to stay relevant and competitive?
Contributors

• • Brian Stewart, Deputy CIO and Director of Business Transformation , University of Alberta
  • Gregg Chottiner, Vice President for Technology Advancement and Chief Information Officer, New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:23]:

This is Sanjog Aul, and welcome to the segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. The topic for today is Developing Digital Dexterity, and we have Gregg Chottiner who’s the CIO with New Jersey Institute of Technology. Hey, Greg. How are you?

Gregg Chottiner [00:00:40]:

Good. Thank you. Good morning.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:42]:

Great to have you, and we have Brian Stewart, who’s the deputy CIO and director of business transformation at University of Alberta. Hey, Brian. How’s life?

Brian Stewart [00:00:51]:

Great. Thanks very much.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:53]:

So, the topic that we have, we are gonna cover today is essentially something which is like almost I call it Star Trek for some people, but frankly, a lot of organizations are looking to implement, which is think about a workplace where human and digital resources are reconfiguring themselves based on the business needs and that they do it dynamically and autonomously and fluidly. So if this was to be accomplished in an enterprise setting, which is known to be not always monolithic but kinda close to it where they have their old style approaches to bureaucracy and also technology, can we take that leap in terms of developing this digital dexterity? That’s what we wanna discuss. So Brian, I’d like to start with you as the first question. Given enterprises always wanted predictability, that means they want a well defined structure and controlled change. Do you think we are ready, an organization is ready to break such molds and the age-old ways of doing things and suddenly become this futuristic organization?

Brian Stewart [00:02:14]:

My first answer would be no. The question then goes to what is that futuristic space that you’re sort of articulating there? How far away from current will that be? A lot of times when we talk about technology, we tend to advance it beyond where it will ever go. If you go back in time and you look at what was happening in the industrial revolution, people would look at and say this will take over. Even in the 50s, we’re talking about we would have motorized pathways that would be the way we would move because we wouldn’t walk anymore. Those are things that we tend to hyperinflate the expectations that we see technology doing. So I think we have to bring those back a bit to say what is the real, more realistic future that we will be experiencing, and that’s not to say we’re ready for that either, but let’s calm down in terms of what we expect the future to be. Organizations have grown based on the technologies that they use and based on our psychology, and then we form organizational structure to reflect that, and then we work within those because they’re efficient and effective, and they do what we need them to do. Now we get new tool sets and new technologies that enable us in very different ways. We have to look in terms of how that impacts the structures that we’ve now created. What does this allow us to do that we could never do before, or do better than what we’re currently doing? And we’re really only imagining those right now. We see them in some industries or some company. We’ve seen what they’re doing, and they’re sort of very futuristic in their approach, but even they are struggling in terms of how they reconstruct themselves, and even if we look at the forerunners with Google, Microsoft, and Tesla, they’re struggling to understand what organizational structures they have even though they’re far in advance of most of the rest of the industrial and public sector organizations. They’re still struggling to understand this, and so I’d have to answer your question is that no. We’re not ready. Partly because we don’t know what ready looks like and partly because we’re still very much mired in existing mindsets.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:17]:

So, Greg, building upon what Brian just mentioned, I loved your combination of psychology and technology, Brian, where these two in combination develop what a company ends up doing over the years. So, Greg, do you think the intent is even there to become that futuristic or we are on the fence or just in a wait and watch mode? Because there are a few front runners, if you will, or first movers who are trying and failing and trying again and failing again, and we are watching it as a sandbox and see where this leads us and then you’re gonna make the move or you are chomping at the bits and you’re getting your organization ready?

Gregg Chottiner [00:05:03]:

Well, I think in not only my case, but my experience, I think the organizational culture of the organization very often tends to drive some of those decisions. We are seeing more and more instances of machine learning and artificial intelligence in the technology that we use. So it is adapting and reacting much quicker than humans can or IT staff in this case can. I think our challenge is getting the staff comfortable with these technologies because culturally, I think what people are seeing is their jobs could be replaced by the ability of this technology to react and adapt to what the business needs are. While you have lots of technology companies, especially in our network environment, we’re seeing this probably more often. We’re seeing technology and equipment reacting very quickly and it’s changing the way that people support and configure the equipment, and I think it’s a scary proposition and that’s why I think the culture sometimes is more of an impediment than the actual technology is.

Sanjog Aul [00:06:19]:

So Brian, we speak about the command and control or the predictability that enterprises have always taken pride in. There is some value to be able to predictably tell your customers, internal or external, that we will deliver something and we indeed deliver. Do you think—and that’s why this discussion is not to just kind of keep this idea aside because we cannot see it—but if you just were to brainstorm, how would you envision an environment where things are happening autonomously and where people and processes are essentially relinquishing control voluntarily to allow this autonomy and the fluidity?

Brian Stewart [00:07:10]:

Just in terms of predictability, I think what we want more than predictability is reliability. So it’s a slight difference in terms. I think we all look for reliability so that we know that something that we want is going to happen in the way that we want it rather than predictability, which I think is more controlled. So I would lessen the constraint on that one. In terms of organizations and the sort of autonomy or empowerment that you’re describing, those are huge challenges. The huge challenge was as individuals. If you’re a boss, if you’re the manager, supervisor, director, whatever level you’re at, you’ve got an accountability that you have to deliver on, and you’re obviously going to be a little nervous about making sure that that happens because your career or your income may depend on it. So it’s really very difficult for you to relinquish that level of control to some more autonomous structure that you’re not quite sure how it might happen. Greg’s point about culture is critical here. So what is the organizational culture you’re in? What is the societal culture you’re in will depend very much on how we move down that path. If you’re in a very controlling culture where everything is hierarchical, that’s gonna be extremely difficult for you to adapt into a more democratic culture where you’re more egalitarian in your decision making. If you’re in a more democratic culture where people are more fluid in terms of responsibilities and accountability, it’s going to be a lot easier, but it does present a huge challenge to give up, as Greg said, your power or your job skills and your understanding, your knowledge to give that away. That’s a hugely impactful decision to make because it’s like, am I giving my job away? Or am I giving my power away in terms of position authority and being accountable for certain things? So these are two real significant challenges that we’re going to face. It comes down to the culture of your organization, in terms of the trust that you have in the organization to support you when you make those decisions. Are they going to be forgiving if the autonomousness of my decision making fails to make a particular deliverable? Or am I going to have a job if I give my skill set away or my knowledge set to either a machine or an alternate human to deal with? Am I going to still be here? That comes down to the trust you have in your organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:44]:

So, Greg, very well put, Brian. Now, Greg, there could be a fear-driven change and usually that’s not the most progressive change or it perhaps stalls people more than moves them forward, but at the same time, we should also look at a positive trigger, which will make people take the leap of faith whether or not they trust—let’s assume that they trust the organization, but there needs to be some sort of a positive trigger which will make people say, I’m ready to allow autonomy about something which I’m responsible for in terms of the reliability, but I’m gonna relinquish control and allow autonomy because I believe in how the rest of the team and the organization and the technology is working. What would that positive trigger look like in your view?

Gregg Chottiner [00:10:36]:

Well, I think it’s a challenge because human nature is difficult to change. In my case, and I suspect in Brian’s also, when you work in a university or a college and you have shared governance models and unions, it’s not always that easy to modify someone’s position or responsibilities in the organization without lots of committees and lots of external pressures that are not necessarily strategic or focused on the issue at hand. So I think progressive people are always trying to reinvent themselves, much like companies are, and learn new skill sets to do those things, but I think culturally, when you have hit a point in your career where perhaps you are comfortable with what you’re doing and less likely to adapt to new technologies and new thought processes, that’s where we have some of the challenges. Back to that culture again, younger people, people just out of college, are much more adaptable to these types of technologies. People who have been performing these roles, or almost the same roles for years, tend not to be quite as adaptive and receptive to these types of new changes.

Sanjog Aul [00:12:02]:

So, if I were to ask you another question: if you are asking people to change in a certain way, everyone would love a positive change, but if we continue to measure their performance—imagine your performance appraisal or any of your business unit leaders or their staff—if they are measured in a certain way, their incentives and their compensation, and then their promotions are being evaluated in a certain way, any shift from that will not be welcome. So before we ask humans to change, do we have to change our organizational design and the way we measure or evaluate their performance and the outcomes they produce?

Gregg Chottiner [00:12:46]:

Is that directed to me?

Sanjog Aul [00:12:47]:

Yeah. Greg. Yeah. To Greg.

Gregg Chottiner [00:12:50]:

I think we do, and maybe it is a function of for-profits and nonprofit organizations that have different business models, so they have different incentive models. In the higher ed space where we are not profit-loss oriented necessarily, there may be less incentive to try and do some of those things to try and reduce costs and gain efficiencies, which is typically what you’re trying to achieve. We have to deliver a set of services to our constituents and we do that as efficiently as we can. Very often I’m being asked to provide more services with a flat staff complement. So in those cases, I think it makes a lot of sense, but to really push this forward, the idea of adaptability and digital dexterity, I think we have to change business models in the nonprofit sector that, again, is a bit isolated from for-profit in that we are not driven by profit.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:59]:

Let’s take a quick break. Listeners will be right back, and Brian, when we come back, let’s talk about the collaborative learning which we need for digital dexterity, which could span essentially geography, the lines of business, and there may be other types of boundaries which we have created in a traditional enterprise. Since you want that to be the basis of everyone connecting with each other, not just within a small little group, for it to be seen as an organization with digital dexterity. Can we break those walls down? And if yes, how? Please stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:14:45]:

Predict your company’s future by creating it. Is your workforce able to connect, exchange ideas, and share brilliance simply and securely? Create tomorrow, today. Empower your people to innovate anytime and anywhere with secured BlackBerry Enterprise Mobility Management and document sharing solutions. To learn more, visit blackberry.com/enterprise.

Speaker 0 [00:15:12]:

Patient centered care requires a connected enterprise. Are you ready? If you’re looking to scale your health care IT efforts, visit redmain.com/health today. Whether it’s to connect data from multiple partner solutions or developing software for unique needs, Redmain can help. To find out how Redmain can help your company deliver on the patient centered care promise, visit redmain.com/health or call (773) 693-3919. Visit today.

Speaker 0 [00:15:46]:

Your growing business needs a highly productive workforce, effectively communicating and collaborating without exposing corporate data to cyber attacks. Are you looking to balance security and workforce productivity? Move beyond short term measures and securely scale your business with BlackBerry Enterprise Mobility Management Solutions. To learn more, please visit blackberry.com/enterprise. You are listening to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:35]:

Welcome back. So, Brian, imagine you could make all your different lines of business. It could be an educational institution or even other traditional companies from other industries. You could break those lines or those walls across geography, lines of business, or any other kind of boundaries you may have established. If you could do that, what would that process look like of people undoing what has been those walls were created many years ago and they were strengthened over the years because of the way enterprises typically work. How would you start undoing them?

Brian Stewart [00:17:18]:

So let me just approach this from a very pragmatic approach and then maybe broaden it out to a bigger view. 1 is to experiment. If you’re going to change something, do controlled experiments. I think this is a key to our future. You can’t know the full impacts of any of the trajectory of a social shift will have, but what you can do is you can start to trial it in a controlled way to look at it and to try and understand how it might impact on the constraints that you put within the experimental design. So that’s gonna be a crucial approach that we take to be able to try and understand how we may wish to use the technology and how it might impact how we work and how we collaborate and how we share information and share learning. So that’s a very pragmatic approach. Let me draw up now in terms of the broader context of how that might impact organizations or how organizations might wish to view themselves in a more collaborative world. We aren’t actually un-collaborative. That tends to be how we are. So I don’t think there’s gonna be a problem in terms of humans collaborating. We like that. We do that. It’s how we operate in our society and in our social groups. The question, though, becomes in organizations we tend to get pigeonholed into silos or into segments or teams and then communication channels begin to wither outside of your direct group. Look at any network diagrams, you’ll see that happen. You’ll see where people’s networks are and who they communicate most with, and it’s generally with our local team, and then it dissipates thereafter. So these are crucial issues that we have to face if you want to move fast, if you want to innovate quickly, and if you want to really take advantage of the affordances of the technology. How can you create what was put back in the 70s by Peter Senge in terms of the learning organization? We now actually have the ability to create a learning organization technologically. The question is how can we do it in the sense of our own organizational constraints? If you look at some of the areas that we might look at for other industries—Greg has a post-secondary background and we’re both in higher ed—these are very, very hierarchical organizations, very siloed organizations. Sometimes they’re designed that way. So they’re not real even though, ironically, this is where we develop learning and research, and this is where an awful lot of information technology came from. It’s ironic that these organizations aren’t as collaborative as we would wish them to be, outside of some of the research areas. So if you look at the marketing area, if you look at something happening to design thinking, you can see that people working in those industries are much more collaborative in terms of how they share information, and I think those are very interesting examples of what we could look at to say, okay. This is a way that we might be able to do this. These are maybe some areas we could look at in terms of how we can become, for lack of a better term, hyper collaborative and hyper sharing. So I think that may be an interesting perspective to take, but to go back to my first point, I think what we have to do to try and start breaking down some of these walls is to start experimenting and then learn from the experiments.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:47]:

Greg, building upon what Brian just said, what would you tell people to embrace this idea about breaking the walls? Because silos were created for, I’m assuming, some reason—maybe some independence, some objectivity, some control or whatever that business reason was. Not necessarily a psychological reason, but maybe a business reason. Why would someone do this? What’s in it for me would be the first question that’ll pop in their mind. If you were to evangelize this concept, what would you say?

Gregg Chottiner [00:21:22]:

Well, one of the things I like to try and do is provide people with the opportunities to do research and innovate within their piece of the organization. So one of the ways we try and reach that point of digital dexterity is to challenge people to look at the latest trends, look at the latest technologies, look at the latest business processes, and promote, as Brian said, experimentation or build proof of concepts, and give them an opportunity to be challenged and to determine if some of the information that they derive or extract from their research can actually be implemented in a production environment to see if some of what they have found would actually work in our environment, and I think that not only generates interest and makes it exciting for individuals, it gives us a path to continue innovating and taking a look at these technologies so we stay not so much to be early adopters, but we stay relevant and don’t fall so far behind that it’s difficult to catch up with your peer institutions.

Sanjog Aul [00:22:41]:

So what you just mentioned definitely makes sense when you are trying to get an organizational group to start embracing digital dexterity in the four walls that they have erected around themselves. Now we’re talking about spanning different groups. You’re telling them to let go or tell other people what you’re doing or allow other people to come and exert control on what you were doing. So you’re asking them to break the walls. How would you motivate people to let go and to allow breaking those walls and invite those guests in who might want to change things the way you have been doing?

Gregg Chottiner [00:23:30]:

Yeah. I’m not sure I have a good answer for that because that’s a challenge when you are going against culture and the history of the organizations.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:43]:

I know the challenge is there. If you were to be given an opportunity to make a shift, I’m sure there will be some things you would do to tweak the culture. That could be ongoing, but what would be your message to them? So let’s look at the first few steps you would take if you were to make this happen.

Gregg Chottiner [00:24:06]:

Well, I think the message to end users would be perhaps a more adaptable and agile environment to the actual staff that are affected. I think that’s the challenge. It’s difficult, again, to tell someone who’s been doing the same thing for many years, here’s how we’re going to do this now, or here’s a piece of technology that can perform this task much quicker and much more effectively than you can do that, but we’re gonna try and find you a new place in the organization. I think that’s one of the challenges we all face.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:42]:

Brian, thoughts on this?

Brian Stewart [00:24:44]:

Yeah. I mean, Greg’s right. It’s gonna be a challenge. I think what we have to do—and to some extent this hints back at, not directly to the question, but there’s a parallel—is when I was in the print industry years ago, we were digitally disrupted. So that was back in the 90s when the desktop revolution came in, and I was in the mix on that one because I was a plant manager. I was displacing workers who were film assemblers. All I could do in terms of helping them through the change was to try to create a safe place for them by bringing them and saying, this is the future. The future as I see it is this, and it’s not looking good for you because your skills are being displaced, and you really don’t have a future with your current skill set. So we can offer these alternatives, and we offered several alternatives that the staff picked from. I think that helped in terms of them agreeing to share their skills or at least not disrupt the disruption itself, not to adopt the Luddite position. They actually joined us and facilitated the adoption of the new technology, which was essentially displacing them. So we had to create that safe place and trust that we had their back as much as we could, but that we were facing an inevitability that none of us could really deal with. If the business wants to continue, we have to do this. Otherwise, the business itself was threatened. So I think we have to create safe spaces, we have to create alternate paths that they can see themselves in, and then there’s always what’s in it for me. There has to be something in it for them. We have to be able to reward them in some way for what they’re giving us for the sharing that they get. If it’s predatory and they share and they see that the sharing goes nowhere, then they’re not going to buy into it. If you’ve any experience on lean and the whole concept of lean, lean is where staff engage in a controlled exercise to eliminate waste in a particular process. One of the key aspects of lean is don’t use it to downsize your staff. Because what you’re asking to do is to share all their knowledge and information and learning to help the process for the benefit of all. If that’s predatory and we take all that learning and then we use it to displace them, guess what? You’re not going to do it again. So we have to have that commitment. If you want to gain from the collaboration and the hyper learning that you’re going to need, then you have to create safe spaces, provide rewards, and provide a path that they can see themselves into the future.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:34]:

Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back, and let’s talk about the way data is used for the decision making in the digital age. In fact, that’s how it has been proposed that you don’t use the gut. There will always be some element of it but for the most part, we should use data for decision making, but then in an enterprise, it has been an age-old challenge to have 1 version of the truth when it comes to data, and if you don’t have your data engineering functions properly placed and they are not really creating value and the state of data is not the greatest, how can you rely on the data to make a decision which is a prerequisite for digital dexterity. How do we tame this beast? How do we tackle the challenge? Where do we get started even to start attacking this problem? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back, and this question will be for you, Greg.

Speaker 0 [00:28:44]:

Your growing business needs a highly productive workforce, effectively communicating and collaborating without exposing corporate data to cyber attacks. Are you looking to balance security and workforce productivity? Move beyond short term measures and securely scale your business with BlackBerry Enterprise Mobility Management Solutions. To learn more, please visit blackberry.com/enterprise.

Speaker 0 [00:29:15]:

Patient centered care requires a connected enterprise. Are you ready? If you’re looking to scale your health care IT efforts, visit redmain.com/health today. Whether it’s to connect data from multiple partner solutions or developing software for unique needs, Redmain can help. To find out how Redmain can help your company deliver on the patient centered care promise, visit redmain.com/health or call (773) 693-3919. Visit today.

Speaker 0 [00:29:48]:

Predict your company’s future by creating it. Is your workforce able to connect, exchange ideas, and share brilliance simply and securely? Create tomorrow, today. Empower your people to innovate anytime and anywhere with secured BlackBerry Enterprise Mobility Management and document sharing solutions. To learn more, visit blackberry.com/enterprise. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:30:29]:

Welcome back. So, Greg, the decisions that we have to make in the digital age cannot be just based on gut. They have to become data driven, and we have issues with creating clean and 1 version of the truth when it comes to data in an enterprise. This is not a new problem. It’s a chronic issue. So will this chronic challenge continue and prevent us from achieving digital dexterity, or are there some solutions we can deploy?

Gregg Chottiner [00:31:07]:

Well, that’s a good question. We are very immature in being able to interpret and capture all the data points that are available to us now. One of our challenges is to try and start converting all this unstructured data into some structure so that we can use our analytics tools to help make better decisions. We’re relying on some of the new predictive analytics capabilities, but we are still at the immature stage of being able to do those things. I agree with your premise that you can’t really make those kinds of digital dexterity decisions unless you have good data points to be able to process and interpret. That’s really a challenge for us. I think often we go to our gut because it’s most comfortable and it stays within our comfort zones. Being able to use the data makes a lot of sense, but as we all know, data can be interpreted so many different ways. So I think we have to create standards. That’s something at my present organization we are trying to create structured data standards and data management so we can make better decisions, and right now, we’re not there yet.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:28]:

Brian, so if we had to play a consultant to organizations who are trying to go towards digital dexterity like enterprises, how would they go about starting chipping away at this problem at the very least so that the 1 version of the truth for data starts becoming more manageable and more reliable in your terms?

Brian Stewart [00:32:54]:

It’s interesting that we use the concept of 1 version of the truth. I used the analogy of if you looked at a sports game and when a call is made and then they review it, you see multiple camera angles, all looking at the same event, yet all telling something different about the event. From one angle the play is good, and from another angle the play is bad, yet they’re all watching the same thing. So which is the source of truth? When you start talking about data and information, the single source of truth is a variable concept and has to be considered advisably. Generally, when we talk about 1 source of truth, we’re talking about 1 dataset that is the official dataset that is credible, is accurate, is current, and is protected. In many organizations that is within their enterprise resource planning system, and that’s where the single source of truth usually resides. What we don’t want is multiple sources that are derivatives of each other where we don’t know which one is the right number to believe in: what were our sales this month, what was the labor cost this month—we don’t know because it’s all over the place and no one’s quite sure. Those are the things we need in terms of making sure that we have single sources of truth. As Greg has pointed out, 1 of the key problems we have is that we don’t know where all our data is. We have data all over the place. In higher education institutions that’s even more complex because we have devolved and disaggregated structures which allow people to keep data for themselves and not really share it. So there are lots of pockets of data that we’re not really sure about. If I’m advising anybody who wants to go to a data-driven organization, you need data to drive digital change and to become dexterous in the digital realm. You have to find out where your data is. You need to take on a data inventory operation. Find out where your data is. Find out what it is. You need to institute data management. Create a data reference architecture for where you want to be in the future. The term data architecture is new to many people. In fact, some people would say they shouldn’t be in the same sentence, but that’s a thing that will grow. That’s the term we will increasingly hear, and the last of these initial approaches I would recommend is you need data governance. You need the institution or the organization to identify what it wants to do with data, how it handles data, how it stewards data, how it names data, and how it stores data. Those have to be governance issues that the organization addresses. Otherwise, even if you know where everything is, you have no control over what it is. You will have people naming things as they want, and you’ll have people describing and using data in ways that you’re not necessarily comfortable with, or in fact might be negative to the company itself.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:07]:

So, Greg, let’s come to the workforce itself. Think about the type of people you would need for digital dexterity which has been defined as fluid, autonomous, and just flowing. There’s a fluidity to it. That means the workers need to be open-minded and willing to take on anything that is handed over to them. They need to be creative and they should be resourceful and entrepreneurial. Compare or contrast that to what a typical enterprise used to hire—people who, yes, want creativity, but also want people who can take an instruction and run with it and do it over and over. You got all sorts of people. So what will we need to do to the enterprise workforce for it to be conducive for digital dexterity given that there is quite a bit of shift expected in the workforce if we are going the digital dexterity route?

Gregg Chottiner [00:37:13]:

Well, I think you’re correct that enterprises traditionally have hired people with specific skill sets to perform specific functions and that was their value to the organization. Very often, creativity and entrepreneurial traits were not part of those position descriptions because they weren’t necessarily important for that person to be successful. In the scenario that you’re describing, it’s almost up to the organization to begin looking for people with not only those more structured skill sets, but the creativity that may not have even been accepted or valued in the past, but now perhaps it is a competency that organizations need to adapt and leverage digital dexterity. So I think it’s a reshaping of the organizational hiring structure. HR departments need to be involved with those building processes. IT organizations need to relook at what they’re hiring and what those needs actually are so that they can not only keep the lights on today, but get to the future state with the staff that we have because you can’t just change people out constantly. You’ve got to create an environment where people feel comfortable and supported by management. So I think it’s a challenging building process.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:55]:

Brian, if you were to be tasked with something like this and you know that you have some talent in house, and you will inherit talent who were not hired for such competencies—some people may have some of those which we need to let surface so that they can show their creativity, etc, but not everyone had the skills or they didn’t even sign up for this. Are we saying displace workers voluntarily not just because they were not relevant in terms of technology, but even for the mindset because they did not want to be entrepreneurial or they didn’t have the open-mindedness which was not expected of them earlier?

Brian Stewart [00:39:45]:

I don’t think people are cast in iron that way and that’s the way they’ll always be. I think we’re adaptable. We can change and we can learn. Otherwise we might as well stop education because you got what you got and forget it. We can develop. Just because people weren’t hired to be entrepreneurial, open-minded and innovative doesn’t mean they can’t be. They need to be encouraged, trained, and supported. Some will be better at it than others, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a baseline that is effective and acceptable. Some people, when there’s a shift, may not be able to cope. That’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is. I think the majority of our employees can adapt and adopt. In most of Greg and my world, where we hire people who deal with technologies, generally they’re of a pretty high level of training and education to be able to deal with those technologies. They weren’t hired to be entrepreneurial; they were hired to be technical and operational, but I have no reason to believe they can’t achieve a level of entrepreneurship or innovation that is effective enough for what we need. Everybody can’t be their own entrepreneur wandering off individually. We need a collective team. Like any team, people play different positions. Some people have strengths and others have complementary strengths. It’s not individualistic entrepreneurship; it’s team and organizational entrepreneurship. We need to develop a team to be effective and high performing rather than demand many individuals with particular skill sets. I believe we can get there with the majority of our current staff.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:51]:

And so in the technology department, I agree with you that people naturally like to be creative and you kind of hire people whose DNA makes them more adaptable. Since digital dexterity is spanning all departments within the organization, is there something the technology group should do to lead the charge and lead by example for other people to see the value? If someone were to tackle this workforce issue, and I’d like to also throw 1 more thing in there: our education system, since you both come from educational institution backgrounds, is stemming from an industrial approach—you learn, have somebody learn a programming language, and then you do 4-5 things, and then you come into the workforce. Do you think we have to also make a dent there? Because we are in a way shaping them at the time when they enter college, and when they come out, they are going to implement what they learned, but here, we are talking about an entirely different set of skill sets. What would you do, Brian, to shift things outside of your IT department and even at an education system level?

Brian Stewart [00:43:09]:

I’m not the traditional person who comes from education because, as I say, I was in industry most of my career and I came late to education. I have a different perspective. I’m challenged by many of the ways we educate; it tends to be very formulaic and industrialized. I think technology has a huge role in how we can change and enhance learning, but that’s a separate discussion. In terms of subject matter rather than methodology, yes. When we’re training and educating students, they have to have a broader skill set. We can’t just narrow them down to one thing. I think that’s done in terms of anybody who enters a comp sci program—you will have to take some arts courses and some general science courses. So there is broadness. Do they have to take a thinking course? Do they have to take, let’s say, a business course? Not necessarily as a prerequisite; it might be an elective. Those skill sets are going to be crucial. One of the key things is the difference between IT and digital: IT looks at providing technology; digital looks at using technology. The shift has to be that our future workforce is much more focused on using it, with all the skill sets of understanding how to provide it. That’s the sweet spot of the future digital worker: you know how it’s used, you can understand business context, and you also understand the complexity of what it needs to get that done. You can’t have these two camps with a tiny overlapping sliver. Those technical and business skill sets have to overlap much more. The gap in the middle is what we have to train our future workforce for.

Sanjog Aul [00:45:08]:

Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back, and, Greg, when we come back, let’s talk about the tools and technologies that are available today for collaboration and communication or any kind of coordination effort we have to do across departments, across boundaries even of the organization. For digital dexterity—the autonomy, the fluidity, and the dynamic shifts that it expects—are our tools and technologies there yet? If not, what’s missing? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

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Sanjog Aul [00:47:39]:

Welcome back. So, Greg, in your organization, you must be using quite a few tools for communication, collaboration, coordination, etc, and I’m sure newer-age students are stretching your tool sets or may be demanding more tool sets, but now let’s take the holy grail for digital dexterity. Where do you think the gaps are?

Gregg Chottiner [00:48:06]:

Well, I think for the most part, the introduction of cloud technologies has really increased the opportunity and the ability to leverage collaboration tools. They are readily available, especially in the higher ed space where companies provide very aggressive costs or in some cases, no costs for these collaboration tools. So they are used at group levels, department levels, enterprise levels. I think it’s become really available to use those tools for both small group collaboration and mass communications for large groups of people. In many cases, what I am seeing now is younger staff members who are more comfortable with those collaboration tools are effectively influencing some of the older workers to become comfortable using those same tools. The ability to collaborate in real time on documentation, ideas, and thoughts has been a powerful tool and has certainly allowed us to gain some efficiencies and shorten the amount of time it takes to reach a consensus on a particular problem or discussion. Those tools are great. I just think it is getting people to continue being comfortable with using those tools, and again, I say in real time because it’s an interesting concept to actually see a document being edited in real time and be comfortable doing those sorts of things compared to the past when people would email their thoughts or email documents to one another. So it’s a mind shift, but I think we’re certainly moving that way very quickly.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:54]:

So Brian, anything which looks more futuristic today but will be a prerequisite for digital dexterity when it comes to tools that is not there yet? That would be a shout out to the toolmakers—what would those be?

Brian Stewart [00:50:11]:

I think AI will play a role here, machine learning in particular. If you look at intelligent agents, many of us have these in our homes or on our cell phones where we ask Google or Siri for information. That ability can be brought into the tools we use. One thing we’re going to be trialing here is an intelligent agent to take minutes where it will sit and listen to a meeting and then take the minutes. We haven’t tried it yet, so we’re waiting to see how interesting that could be. That can also provide tasks. It can create tasks from the discussion and then assign those tasks to people’s calendars, and then it can follow up on those tasks to see if people are done. Those are very interesting perspectives. That’s a very mundane task to follow up with people—have you got this done? Where is it? Is it due? It can go further and provide literature on a particular topic you missed or sign some reports or other meeting minutes that might be relevant. That’s really interesting and could advance us enormously whereby you’re not searching through records to find what you need because it’s been provided to you. I think that’s a gap that will be filled within the next 1 year or so and we’ll start using these things in a much more productive way. So while we have the base tools—WhatsApp, Slack, Trello, whatever—they’ll become NLP-enabled and will actually provide us much more information than simply saying you’ve got something to do.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:03]:

One last question, and that’s for you, Greg. The risk—since we speak about everything else and we want to be progressive and futuristic—what should we be doing to make sure that while we go towards digital dexterity and autonomy to manage risk to reasonable levels? It will never be a zero-risk situation, but at least how do we manage business and IT risk effectively as we work towards digital dexterity?

Gregg Chottiner [00:52:39]:

Well, I think you have to work with the senior leadership of the organization and get them comfortable with opportunities, proofs of concept, and ideas that can be used to provide efficiencies and leverage some of these latest technologies. To build on what Brian was talking about, we are looking at using bots for our customer service capability so that technology will actually be responding to user requests as opposed to trying to scale the help desk to do those sorts of things. Those are ideas that are becoming more commonplace now. So I think getting leadership comfortable with some of these decisions and working with the organization’s IT department to accept that this is a reality that is coming and getting people unconcerned about what’s coming in the future and having them look forward to these things as part of the solution rather than finding areas where you can put people who are reluctant is important.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:58]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, thanks so much, Brian and Greg, for sharing your thoughts regarding the steps we can take to enable digital dexterity in an enterprise setting. Thanks so much.

Brian Stewart [00:54:10]:

Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:13]:

And, listeners, please like us on Facebook. Search for CTN, CIO Talk Network, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn group. Thank you again for listening to the segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care, and God bless.