Evolving and serving Tech solutions, with ethical, empathetic and engaged spirit: The Microsoft Way

Rarely, you get a chance to get perspective on impact of Technology innovation on societies by a legal counselor, who understands both the nuances and capabilities of new technologies and also different perspectives and concerns around these technologies seen from wide range of stakeholders. 

What, if government asks for an enterprise data from tech company, at the same-time restrict the tech company to let the concerned enterprise know about the request?  What if the government asks of global tech companies, for information that resides in data-center located in another country? The bigger question is that shall as owner of my face, do I deserve to be asked by tech companies before using my facial signature for whatever purpose, especially when I fear this may lead to bias or discrimination?

Brad smith brings to life, with help of instances, the balancing acts tech companies have to ensure, between individual and enterprise privacy rights and governments rights to know for genuine reasons of preventing or investigating crimes or public safety, for example.  He goes on to describe the evolutionary path tech sector has gone through to help address these challenges situations in a principled, legally supported (CLOUD ACT), technology enabled (say encryption) manner, and also given the Microsoft’s stand on some of the contentious concerns.

The initiatives and demands made by some governments (Denmark, NZ or EU) often forces global tech companies to develop solutions that would become easy to be offered across the globe.  Microsoft commitment to offer same level of protection to all customers irrespective of their location across the globe, means that the most demanding customers or stringent regulations define the base level for privacy for all, across the globe.  

Similar set of interesting questions and relevant lessons from history are raised around Cybersecurity, rural broadband, social media, public safety and use of AI. 

Brad presents a very balanced assessment of likely impact of AI on workforce, using impact of introduction of automotive and replacement of horses as historical disruption that created new industries (eg. Consumer credit) and decimated existing ones (farms producing horse feeds, eg.).   Yes, in the intermediate, there would be economic losers and winners, but in the long run technological advancements leads to overall improvement in quality of life for all.  Most important question, and most difficult to answer, is how soon will AI type of technologies become mainstream! Agreed.

As Bill gates puts it, BRAD SMITH offers a clear view of the questions raised by new technologies- and yes, also his suggestions of path forward, that needs considered deliberations among the stakeholders- Governments and Company Management. 

Governments, especially within democracies, needs to act fast to match the pace of technology innovation.  Brad suggests that governments approach towards regulation needs to be similar to introducing minimum viable product (regulations) and then build up as more data, experience and understanding comes their way.  Waiting to understand technology in its full nuances and its impact in totality, in quest for comprehensive fool-proof regulation may not work. 

As Technology companies are global, their effective regulation would require multi-lateral comity of nations coming together to design and agree to global standards and principles for regulations- which in increasingly complex world is difficult to achieve.  Brad has hope on the part of the 75 odd democratic nations to form coalition of the willing, to develop some common regulatory provisions and principles, with US taking the necessary lead.     

Self-regulation within companies, are within the control of Companies Boards and can provide necessary support in gaining and retaining stakeholders trust.  Brad proposes principles based approach to handling issues then case-to case handling of instances and then sticking to principles, whatever be the cost help retain trust.  Microsoft, own decision by its ethics committee to refuse selling facial recognition technology to Government, on citizens liberty concerns, is a case in point. 

Brad has very well brought forth the issues and concerns facing linked to technology innovation and the increasing might and responsibilities of global tech companies in defining better future for the globe, working with stakeholders in a proactive, engaged and enlightened manner.

Off-course- this book is of interest to all, besides lawyers and tech-professionals for whom it falls in must-read category. Don’t read too much in its title though!

HR Practices: Debatable Assumptions, Questionable Effectiveness!

The book critiques the operating assumptions behind popular HR practices and how these flawed assumptions, affects the quality of outcomes that most organizations seek- be it greater productivity, service excellence, leadership bench-strength or engaged workforce.    Let us consider the assertions made in the book, on the basis of experiments done at CISCO and also taking inputs from research elsewhere:

1: People care for the Mission of the company and its Future…..The talk about company culture is good to convey some of the beliefs to outside world and helps attract the right fit among the potential employees.  Once in, the most employee cares about is the team he works with- its shared values, practices and mutual trust. Author suggests taking team as unit of analysis for diagnosis, and interventions more often than is prevalent today. This would allow for greater insights and more nuanced intervention designs- which would off-course involve team leader at its core.

2. Best crafted plan rarely wins, as it is based on fleeting reality and general assumptions- and expects adherence by team members who know that realities are continually changing.  Plans often dictate sequencing of activities and timings, resources allocation, and member roles, which bring in certain structure and predictability in the execution. To keep plans relevant, companies do undertake periodic revisions at regular intervals. Alternately, author talks about broad plans that are detailed on weekly basis and primarily driven by sharing of intelligence and data among all and relying on users’ ability to make sense of the data or new intelligence.   Weekly check by team leader leads to 13% increase in team engagement while monthly check in decreases engagement!

3 Basic assumption behind emphasis on top-down cascading of goals, is that the deficit in performance is on account of misaligned efforts and actions by the team. Is it really so? Goals are seldom able to influence performance, although they help predict performance at aggregate level! Associated with the goal exercise is the calendar based tracking and evaluation system- which has some obvious limitations. Author professes the need to align meaning, purpose, mission across the organization hierarchy and teams instead of only goals for enhancing the engagement level among teams.

4 While competencies framework aims to create well-rounded managers and templated leaders, the excellence comes from people who have spiked personalities with clearly supreme abilities and associated idiosyncrasies.   High performers understand their unique and distinct skills and cultivate these skills intelligently. If leaders are in outcome providing business, should find ways to exploit team members’ uniqueness and not make each to focus on personal deficits.  Competencies profiling at team levels may be a better option.

5.  Ability to provide negative feedback is an important skill and that employees finally gain from such candid feedback- goes the prevailing corporate wisdom.  Neurologically speaking, we are more comfortable in learning in areas, where we are already good.  People gain lot more, if they are interrupted when they deliver their best, help them analyze their own flow and push them to extend that state in other new and adjacent areas.  Do not confuse social media behavior of the millennium as need for feedback for improvement, it is for attention and positive reinforcement.  

6 Rating others objectively on abstract parameters like business acumen, suffers from various limitations including raters own bias, limited data availability and often lack of shared meeting of the term being evaluated. Decisions based on such flawed assessments about someones’ potential are questionable.  And if the errors are more systemic, then averaging assessments of multiple raters won’t help.  Author suggest that to make the data about people more reliable, valid and variable, questions needs to be reframed in a way that managers respond basis their experience and intend then overall raring the person. Instead of asking how collaborative person is, ask how comfortable team feels when he is the part of the team!  How often you ask a team member for suggestion instead of rating member on his innovation competency! 

7 Is potential a trait in a person with which one is born or a state, which is an outcome of what he has learnt and experienced before? And if potential is linked to learning and performing, then each has its own areas where he can be better at and none of us can rewire our brain to be excel at everything.  As value maximization machines, organizations need to extract maximum potential from all then only from those in labeled Hi-Po.  Authors suggest that instead of potential, we should look at individual momentum, which included his inherent strength as mass, and learnt skills and experiences as velocity (with defined direction) which allows individual to herald with certain momentum in one directions than another.  This allows for constructive dialogue around selecting appropriate career paths that capitalizes on the current momentum of an individual.

8 Work is inherently bad and you get compensated for indulging in work and that compensation help you live life…is the prevailing assumption behind the work-life balance dialogue.  Not all work is boring and not everyone finds excitement in the work in a particular way.  Everyone may love some dimension of his work, that component needs to be consciously enhanced and interspersed, so that everyone can get to spend time in love with work.  Instead of get work done through people, get people discover self through work!

9 Leadership is best described in terms of felt experience of followers on their ability to be collective and individual best, when associated with a particular leader.  Leading isn’t a set of characteristics but a series of experiences seen through the eyes of followers..  Leaders are not followed for they have no faults or gaps but they have something unique and deep that we value. And as followers, we are fairly forgiving to the flaws of a leader, so long as he brings confidence and certainty to us on the dent of unique and personal mastery.

Authors, through this provocative book tried to bring forth the flaws in our ways of thinking and managing people growth and performance challenges at workplace, by labelling them a lies. They have also provided alternate truism against each lie, and to some extent also shared ways to manage basis the alternate trues.  

At the core, author wants organizations to: give more recognition to individual uniqueness then template-driven predefined clustering of employees; use teams as unit of analysis and intervention more often than individuals and organization; introduce life in work; and stop developing perfect leaders.  

RIGHT leadership selection: Right type of Men & more Women

This book brings out common biases in our leadership selection process and how it disadvantages women, besides wrong selection impacting organization performance and team motivation. Here are the central arguments put forth by the author, supported by quotes and research findings from multiple sources:

• The projected confidence by an individual is often perceived as competence by others.  Competence is how good you are at something, while confidence reflects how good you think you are.  The more you know about a topic, the more you know what is still to know, and hence makes you more conservative in projecting confidence.  On the contrary, those who know less are often better positioned to project greater confidence, than the real talented ones. There are several research findings supporting this lack of correlation between actual competence and projected confidence.   Only 10% overlap between competence and confidence.   In the situation where leaders are expected to be confident, the self-critical competent and talented may often get ignored and this set may include women in greater proportion. 

• Being Narcissist enhances your chances of being selected as leader.  Narcissist have higher sense of superiority, entitlement and delusion of talent.   Their innate need for power, prestige, and status-seeking, make them better at impression management, ideas-selling and networking with the powerful.   While bit of narcissism is good- as it energizes and reassures teams and project confidence, it is difficult to check the level of narcissism in a leader, once I that position.  Narcissist leaders are prone to displaying deviant behaviors including bullying, fraud, harassment and unethical actions. In its pursuit for grand vision and bold projections, leaders during initial period may go in for extravagant acquisitions that may bite on later date.  Hence actual cost of choosing narcissist as leaders come-out after the initial honeymoon period is over. Worst is that these leaders are less coachable and put-up stiff resistance to any kind of negative feedback.

• Psychopaths is another favored category that tends to be more sampled among the leadership set- than are available in the overall population.  Psychopaths display lack of moral inhibitions and strong desire to break rules, and lack of empathy, but what gets them chosen as leaders include their celebrated character traits as cool disposition under stress, greater resilience, courage and often better verbal ability!  Once made leaders, their performance is often sub-par marked by lack of diligence, disdain for processes and deadlines and passive approach to assuming responsibilities.  

• Charisma is what followers attribute to leader and not something leader can claim on its own.  Followers associate greater faith in charismatic leader to take them out of difficult situations.  Further followers are more accommodating and less critical of the under-performance by leader they find charismatic than not.   The veneer of Charisma wears down a followers get to work closely with Charismatic leader and performance gaps start becoming too evident to be ignored or explained away.

• Given that the leaders have high impact on organization performance and team morale, and also that it is not easy to replace or coach wrongly selected leaders.  If we make the selection criteria more in line with research findings (using standard tools) than driven by appeal and intuition, we are not likely to select narcissist or psychopaths, but proven talent with high EQ and Social capital.  This would not only mean that we would select right male leaders, but is also likely to get more women leaders selected as they are naturally endowed with more aligned traits.  That also means that the need for direct intervention to add female gender ratio among leadership will not be there. 

The book does justice to the question it asks, although the remedy to fix the situation could be lot more descriptive and insightful. Its notes section does provide reference to interesting findings and follow-up read for those interested to explore the topic further.

However, the challenges associated with redefining the leadership selection process, which can disadvantage the existing power structure needs to be looked into.  Case studies and research findings in making the transition from intuition-based to process based leadership selection would be of interest to users. 

An easy read and good reminder for us all to be wary of biases as we move to select next leader for our organizations. 

  

Trillion Dollar Coach is extra-ordinary in delivering known Management Wisdom!

One key take-away from this book is the reinforcement in the known beliefs: Importance of Teams- it’s composition and dynamics, Trust and integrity matters most, leaders to encourage people to believe in themselves, and strive for excellence.

Besides the foundation for all this starts with leaders’ genuine interest in people – reflected in the way they listen, support and even provoke! And Yes, a good manger is now expected to be a good coach as well.

In Bill’s case achieving all the above is more commendable, given the kind of personalities, teams, companies and issues he dealt with. Book provides glimpses of how well Bill managed various challenging situations.

The book is written with inputs from 80 plus individual who knew Bill well and also the context in which he operated, and have first-hand witnessed his coaching technique and its effectiveness.

For readers, who have not personally worked with Bill, the incentive to pick this book is to learn some useful tips around coaching- which as managers or coaches they can employ. It is here the book falls short of the expectations.


Neither the situations are in the form of detailed case studies which can be studied for insights, nor are the techniques or frameworks that Bill applied shared for reference. 

In most of the instances and situations covered in the book, the effectiveness of Bill gets attributed to his unique personality and his application of established management wisdom, which may be praiseworthy, but not of much use in making you a better coach. 

In pursuit of Decent Middle-class life for All

Stiglitz book on People, Power and Profits is commentary on “what is holding us from making average American citizen love a decent middle-class life” and some of the interventions required at Government and Society levels that can help improve the situation.  

For those outside America, book is as much insights into the disproportionate impact of globalization on the impacted as the fallacies and limitations of the alternate prescriptions being proposed or tested in America, under the present regime.  The book recounts the well-known evidences of the broken promises of capitalism and free market economy and the prescriptions are also not entirely new. 

What does the book tell us about our experiences, that is not America specific?

Markets are rarely perfect and hence in real form has limitations; Serves the interests of rich Corporates more than interests of consumers, workers, citizens, and future generations.  Markets shall always under-serve and under-provide for public goods – climate and environment concerns.   

Trickle effect, in the form of growth and prosperity overtime percolating downwards doesn’t work.

Inequality is likely to rise overtime, further facilitated by the inter-generational advantages and disadvantages for the already rich and poor.

Globalization, that was meant to be win-win for all, involved transitions within societies, say for moving from industrial to service economies, which created segment of population that lost (unemployed) and were not adequately supported or cared for during the transition. 

With enhanced global trade, the expectation that world will become more democratic and we shall see increasing harmonization of values (freedom of speech, status of women, respect of environment etc.) has not happened- reverse may actually be happening as each country sees its distinct Values and source of competitive advantage.  China access to personal information about its citizen at levels Europe cannot imagine, gives it advantages in digital innovation and leverage. Countries that impose some form of carbon tax / environment related trade practices (disclosure norms) are disadvantaged against those who don’t.

Advances in the new technologies are likely to exacerbate concerns linked to job eliminations, lowering of wages, greater inequality & institutionalized discrimination (AI backed), corporate monopoly powers, while introducing new concerns linked to privacy and cyber-security.  Addressing these concerns would require collective actions by governments, then waiting markets to provide solution.

What does Stiglitz prescribe?

Government cannot rely only on Monetary policy stimulus to push employment.  Fiscal lever needs to be employed as well.  Government needs to inverts in infrastructure, basic research and public education. Teachers’ salaries have to be enhanced to be able to attract talent to this profession. 

Government needs to think in terms of ‘right to job’ for all those willing to work by proving jobs within government, wherever corporates are not doing enough.  He also seeks way to further enhance workforce participation by women and elderly.  Stiglitz looks towards MNERGA program in India as good option with long term benefits to the society.   

Governments approach towards moving from multi-lateral trade agreements to bi-lateral trade negotiations, focused on extracting favors in the form of reduced tariffs has limitations and may be counter-productive in the long-run.  Universal Basic Income, while offers the necessary safety net for all, is likely to be not substantive enough and may require tax-based funding that may not be feasible.

Tax systems, credit systems and other financial instruments may have to be re-looked into so that investments are funded, jobs created and the inequality is not encouraged in the process. Financial transactions (say short term share transactions) are zero –sum game and has no real benefits, so needs to be taxed.

Besides book contains several comments on the state of affairs and specific suggestions that reflect Stiglitz take on the US policies, current administration dispositions and political context.   It gains importance, given the inter-linkages between political and economic systems and if Stiglitz proposals for economic reforms needs to be implemented it would require supportive political support as well.

The book serves the important needs for all of us to keep in mind that markets have limitations and cannot be relied on for providing decent life to all.  This is not to say that markets are not to be leveraged but go for progressive capitalism, where market created sources of discontent and gaps are proactively and suitably addressed through well designed, directed and intended interventions by the government. 

The Third Pillar: High on INSIGHTS, modest on PRESCRIPTIONS

This book is an insightful and serious read for those interesting in understanding various phenomenon around us, explained in the evolutionary and current context. The book traces the inter-play of State, Markets and Communities and its impact on social and economic across nations like US, Europe, China and India. Accordingly, the suggestions are also centered on role of each of these pillars and their relationships.

Rajan take on the China growth story is interesting and covers whole set of factors starting with retrenchment of staff from loss making PSUs to release labour, shifting focus to cities as epicenter for economic development and government's ability to delicately balance the need to the control and to support the start-ups and private enterprise. Future challenges to China growth would off-course require some rethink. Rajan attributes India relatively slower economic progress to difficulty in land acquisition, dearer credit, procedural delays; the costs associated with vibrant but chaotic democracy. Surely Rajan understanding of India goes much deeper, than the cryptic analysis shared in this book.

Rajan convincingly explains the surge of Populist Nationalists, riding on the disenchantment of majority against the elite, and how this surge may come with its own set of issues, including social unease. The remedy proposed as combination of constitutional patriotism (nations identity linked to shared values), and communities with hold stronger ethnic and cultural entities is an interesting paradigm- but how much of this can be designed and how much this comes as emergent structure as an outcome of societies evolutionary journey is an open question. 

Similarly the phenomenon behind residential sorting and its impact on the inequality in the society is another dimension that require conscious intervention at different levels.

How much should the international institutions decide for the world for cause of common good, and how much should sovereigns have rights to decide for themselves. A very touchy issue, especially in light of widespread mistrust within the community of nations, provoked by the real and imagined capture of international agreements by stronger nations and through the big corporations. Rajan uses the global insistence of Basel norms adoption for financial institutions to drive this fact well. 

Similarly the stringent intellectual property rights (and infringement claims) tends to disproportionately discourage innovation in the relatively less developed societies. The advice is to move towards more inclusive, transparent and negotiated approach to global common goods, then pushing for harmonized rules and regulations across nations. Easier said, than done!

Recognizing the limitations of taking shareholders vs stakeholders benefit maximization as guiding objectives for the Corporate, Rajan middle-path suggestion for taking up the value maximization which comes as sum of value created for genuine set of stakeholders is an interesting concept- that may be worthy of further research.

Clearly the book leaves reader with much to chew, with provocative and creative in its advice and without being prescriptive.

Book Review: Evolutionary Organizations: Operating System matters most!

The alternate approach to traditional bureaucratic, hierarchy driven, rules bound, centrally controlled organization is purpose driven, collective intelligence empowered, self-managing-teams based organizations. The central theme of this book is that the latter form of organizations, which it refers as Evolutionary Organizations, are more effective in delivering sustained results and better equipped to meet the challenges that are essentially complex in nature.

Several theories from time to time have emerged that espouse the importance of basing organizations working in Theory-Y assumptions, and also recognize the diminishing effectiveness of Fredrerick Taylorism in designing modern day workplace practices.

What makes this book a valuable addition to this ongoing mission to make organizations more purpose-driven, adaptive, transparent, engaging and with healthier workplace, is its structured evaluation of twelve dimensions that form the operating system of the organization. 

The Operating System canvas covers broad aspects like Purpose and Strategy to specifics like Meetings & information sharing within the organization- describing how each of these dimensions needs to be relooked at, supported by Thought Starters and alternate practices derived from Evolutionary Organizations. The key questions at the end of each dimension are intended to help self-diagnose own organization status and opportunity for redesign. The questions, however, could have been lot more provocative and challenging!

Given the pervasive role technology is playing in all aspects of organizations functioning, it would be good to consider technology as another dimension in the OS canvas. Evolutionary Organizations may be leveraging technology to liberate and empower nor to control and monitor workforce as against traditional organizations.

The expected emphasis on managing change well, is reflected in whole section being devoted to change – but does contain interesting additions to mostly programmatic and mechanical traditional approach to managing change using kotter model or its variants: The importance of prioritizing tensions (limiting to 7), proposing alternatives to address tensions, conducting experiments and scaling the successful ones.

Dignan underlines the importance of experiments in learning, which works well provided the purpose of experiments are made explicit and we do not associate the outcome of experiments with the effectiveness or smartness of the leader guiding the experiment, as often seen in traditional organizations. This is where leaders ability to promote enabling culture and provide psychological safety to teams play pivotal role.

Isolated adoption of practices from Evolutionary Organizations to traditional organizations seldom work- the change agenda needs to cover the whole OS canvas. Book is rich in resources, be it references to original works, list of evolutionary organizations and practical ideas using games that comes handy to any evangelist that would like to provoke his organization to take the evolutionary path, starting with relooking at the existing operating system.

Mr DIGNAN has done lot more than enough to stoke disenchantment among readers that our organisations are capable of more! And the NEW BRAVE WORK means progress over perfection and courage over caution.

Book Review: Market creating Innovations- a Must for Nations seeking prosperity, but not ENOUGH ?

Here is the key paradigm authors put forth as Nations' route to prosperity. Innovation directed at non-consuming population would spur socio-economic development, through multiplier effect as its impact span economic activities across several sectors including logistics, infrastructure and financial services. Further the infrastructure, both social and physical that gets created to serve the new set of economic activities is likely to be more sustainable as its upkeep would be better taken care of by the beneficiaries by paying directly for use or indirectly through taxes.

As strong advocate of Innovation and with vast body of work behind him in this field, Clayton along with his co-authors, has brought out role of innovation in spurring the overall development of the country in an emphatic manner, supported by good number of illustrative cases. However, innovation focusing on tapping non-consumption segment, as single dominant factor contributing to difference in prosperity levels between South Korea (who focused on market creating innovations) and Mexico (who focused on efficiency innovations) looks far-fetched.

Besides, not every innovation focused at non-consumption market is successful- take example of Nano, which was positioned at rural market two wheeler riders who cannot afford full-priced traditional car. Similarly, infrastructure directed at efficiency gains are as sustainable as those created to serve new markets or deliver to new customers (pull strategy). In fact most of the flyovers or bypass in cities are paid for by common commuters or funded by governments as it saves them travel time which may be used for any purpose, including using part of saved time for generating economic outcomes. China has traditionally created infrastructure first and then invited economic players than the other-way round!

Most of the examples talk about the entrepreneur who came up with product or service that targeted non-consumption segment, and then how it turned out to be a big success at a scale that created huge social and economic surplus for the society. While entrepreneurs may have their own motivation to grow and distinct approach to meeting with challenges en-route to scale (through multi-directional integration for example), national governments have role to play in cultivating entrepreneurs and minimizing impediments to their growth.

Hands-off approach by government in early stages of market creation may create monopolies or wrongful practices that would cost societies too dear later. At the same-time China hybrid approach of mixing of support and vigilance for the start-ups through often direct stake, is a delicate balance, with mixed outcomes. It is with respect to the role of Government in supporting prosperity process that needs greater clarity.

Book does a great job of providing guidelines on how to identify non-consumption markets and supports this with sample of such opportunities in Appendix that can make any entrepreneur or marketer think of possibilities that are normally not so obvious.

While book remind development practitioners and economists on the importance of supporting more market creating innovations, it would be great read for entrepreneurs and business strategists, struggling to identify opportunities that holds immense potential for growth, impact and prosperity for self, organizations and nations.

Demystifying Digital Transformation- A practitioner’s companion

Digital transformation is inevitable, for organisations who seek to remain relevant in the future. The objective of any digital transformation is to innovatively apply the technology stack to reinvent the organisation and the way in which it will engage with the customer to deliver value to them.

Given that each organisation has a unique DNA with distinctive aspirations, the digital journey need to be individually crafted with clear purpose, technology choices, and implementation specifics. Leaders will be called upon to take well-informed and deliberative decisions that have enormous implications and could very well define the future of the organisation.

I, along with Nishith Sharan, have suggested the necessary framework to assist leaders define their transformation agenda and execution specifics. We present an integrated approach, covering technological, strategic and organisational perspectives, while pointing out the decisions that need to be considered at various milestones during the digital transformation journey.

Demystifying Digital Transformation is an essential handbook for the industry leaders and transformation professionals as they embark on the digital transformation journey.

 The prime motivation to write this book is to bring certain rigor and sanity around this topic of digital transformation, so as to avoid lot of wasted efforts, resources and disappointment within organizations.


I wish this book serves the purpose in its usefulness to readers,

Happy to get the feedback, as always

Are we preparing our Organisations to absorb smarter machines, as integral part of talent pool?

In the Second Machine Age, it’s not so clear whether humans will be complements or machines will largely substitute for humans; we see examples of both…… Erik Brynjolfsson, Schussel Family Professor of Management Science at the Sloan School.

Machines have always been integral instrument available to workforce to deliver work more efficiently and consistently. They performed routine and well-structured tasks, be it manual or cognitive, helping workers boost their outputs.  But with improvement in technologies such as AI, Cognitive computing, Natural Language processing, big data analytics, machines have become lot smarter.  Today some of the activities which were unquestionably human (being complex, non-routine), can also be performed with machines, not only efficiently but also with higher quality outputs. 

There are different projections about the extent to which Smarter Machines (SM) will be introduced in our work delivery model, working alongside or instead of human colleagues.  Carl Frey and Michael Osborne have conducted analysis of 702 occupations to rank their susceptibility to technological advancements linked risk.  According to their estimate, around 47% of total US employment is in high risk category.  

If this is to happen, are our organisations ready to embrace this challenge, which will manifest itself in terms of leadership expectations, performance measure, workforce strength, skill requirements or work related policies and processes?  Have we started thinking about the impact of these smarter machines on our organisation, and what should be our approach to managing it?  Is it time we start asking these questions?

New machines display significantly higher capabilities, when compared to traditional machines on three key dimensions:

SEARCH CAPABILITIES:  While traditional machines were able to search from within structured data sets in prescribed formats, SM are able to search from structured and unstructured data, coming from multiple sources, in different formats, almost in dynamic manner.

SOLVING CAPABILITIES: While traditional machines helped solve structured routine well defined and programmable set of problems, smarter machines are able to increasingly solve non-routine, context sensitive problems, with increasing accuracy with every usage.  SM can identify patterns and trends from large data sets and put forth advice with associated probabilities.      

SERVE CAPABILITIES: Machines can now serve responses in any format, and converse with humans as near humans with natural language as medium of conversation. 

Every other day, we see new examples of SM replacing human work, completely or partially, as enterprises experiment with them.  Some published examples are shared as case in point:

1.       USAA, a financial service company, uses smarter machine to handle its Armed Forces customers’ queries with regard to transitioning to civilian-life.  Machines uses data base of 2000+ questions and 3000+ military training documents as search base to solve customer questions and respond in natural language.  (IBV paper)      

2.       Associated Press is using smarter machine from company Automated Insights to autonomously create Quarterly Corporate Earnings stories, from data coming from Investment Research firm(ZackS). AI algorithm can process large number of financial announcements, press releases and other information and then offer personalised financial advice at large scale and lower cost. 

3.       Computer Assisted Translation technology is being employed to speed up the translation work, as it memorises earlier translations and use for preparing half cooked translated material for human translators to perfect.   

4.       Oncologists at Memorial Sloan-kettering Cancer Centre are using IBM Watson computer to provide chronic care and cancer treatment diagnostics using pattern recognition capabilities, with 600000 medical evidence reports and 1.5 million patient records and trials as referable data set. 

5.       Deep Knowledge Ventures (DKV), a Hong Kong venture capital fund appointed a computer algorithm named Vital  to its board of directors, claiming to be the first company of its kind to give a machine an "equal vote" when it comes to investment decisions. (BBC)

6.       Law firms rely on smart machines to scan thousands of legal briefs and precedents to assist in pre-trail research.

7.       Dr Mark Oleynik is working on creating automated kitchen housed by robotic chef that can create dishes like the professional chef it learns cooking from.  (Economist)

Yes, these examples may take time to go mainstream, but not as much time as earlier technologies have taken. These capabilities are growing exponentially and the costs of such machines are going downwards, fast, really fast!

While IT and Operational departments are busy identifying suitable business use-cases and associated technological solutions for incorporating these SM in the ways of delivering work, HR department needs to be proactively thinking of its implications for the organisation, leadership and workforce management.  Let us look at each of these areas:

Leadership: Leaders working alongside SM, that can throw unbiased data backed probabilistic recommendations, demands greater maturity and acceptance from the leaders. It can be a fight between domain expert taking out of experience and SM sharing advice that is based on pattern recognition from immense data from multiple sources.  Leaders need to be open to reconciling between gut feel and data based alternatives to problem solving. They need to be open to questioning their beliefs as domain experts and to re-examine counter intuitive suggestions coming out of machines. How do we empower leaders to have the strength of conviction to go their way, despite what SM advices? Are leaders going to be made accountable for going against SM advice, in case of things going wrong?  On the other hand, how will you keep domain experts motivated, if in most of the cases they have to go by SM advice.  Finally, leaders need to be smarter themselves in defining and asking right kind of questions to their smarter assistants (ie SM). 

Workforce Management: SM introduction will replace or redefine some jobs and consequent workforce requirements.  Those jobs that are high on creative intelligence, social intelligence or perception and manipulation seems to be least impacted, all others jobs are vulnerable. Tpo begin with, using the available thought-ware and general guidelines, we need to have view on the extent of staff that is working on vulnerable jobs.  It would have implications on the hiring vs contracting decisions, especially with medium term horizon. Also is there a way to reconfigure set of vulnerable jobs to ensure that certain category of revised jobs have greater creative intelligence, social intelligence and perception component? This readjustment effort takes time hence the need to take cognizance of the impending challenges and start thinking now.       

Skill Development:  The scope for skill development will have two clear objectives- enhancing skills among staff to work with SM and enhancing skills among employees to help tide over the transition as their existing jobs get make reconfigured/replaced and they have to look for alternate ways to stay employed and relevant. In the first category fall learnings with regard to natural language processing, database system and administration, and interface design, that would be spearheaded by technical department and supported by HR.  The second category include trainings with regard to critical thinking, evidence based decision-making, social intelligence and change management, where HR has to take lead.    

Use-case participation: SM introduction will most likely take the use-case based pilot approach to implementation.  While pilot may be focussed on validating the value generating potential of the new delivery model (using smarter machine), it is important for HR to also use the pilot to study the change impact analysis of the proposed solution.  For example, in the assisted decision making by manager, how will be the accountability of the wrong decision is tracked and established?  This may require some changes in the policies, as well.

Perception management: Also managing the expectations of the workforce on the efficacy of the new solution needs to be addressed as the SM effective benefits may take some usage to get to its full potential.  Here HR has to play its traditional role of managing naysayers that are quick to dismiss any new disruptive solutions and maintain the positive culture around the need to experiment and be open to new ways of working.    

SM idea shall be hitting our enterprise shore, in some form or other, and we need to be partnering with its carriers/sponsors to ensure organisation is ready to embrace it without much pain,

Do you agree?  Are there some other aspects of SM introduction that organisations should take note off? 

Share your views and comments, as always   

Change Management for Digital Transformation vs ERP implementation: What’s the difference???

Recently, one of my colleagues, a Change Management (CM) professional with experience in driving several ERP transformation programs, has taken up an assignment to help client undertake digital transformation, primarily aimed at internal operations.  He is deliberating on a question, which I think several of change management professional will encounter soon:

 

How is the CM approach going to be different for digital transformation program, compared to that in an ERP implementation project?

Here are a few initial reflections to set the stage and invite views, comments and experience sharing from this group: 

The key characteristics of Digital transformation program vary from the ERP implementation program in certain ways, including the following: (not exhaustive)

1.       Digital transformation program is often conceived in the form of vision that is quite wide, aspirational and all encompassing (customer interface, internal operational processes and operating model) supported by broad road map. The desired states are more often described in terms of value adding scenarios and differentiating services that are made possible by providing additional capabilities (collaborative, analytical, mobile etc) and their creative adoption by the employees. Business cases associated with ERP programs are a lot more definitive and with clear steady state targets.

2.       Digital transformation programs often add to and complement the existing technical capabilities and functionalities available to users to perform their regular work. For example, advent of Enterprise Social Network does not mean discontinuation of email system. Whereas ERP program often aims to automate manual / excel sheet work and to that extent replaces the old ways of working.  To that extent, an employee can live without participating in enterprise social network, but cannot bypass ERP based approvals to conduct daily business.

3.       The nature of risk linked to digital transformation program is largely linked to confidential information sharing which is perceived more severe than in typical ERP implementation program. 

4.       Leaders have no choice but to actively participate and lead by example, in case of digital transformation program. Hence their behavioural change/alignment is a pre-requisite. In case of ERP implementation program, public endorsement of its importance while delegating its actual usage to assistants is possible, but not in case of digital transformation program. After-all leader cannot delegate writing blogs, podcasts, video-casts to others without being exposed!

5.   ERP delivers value from ensuring that process level integration points, which flow across functional boundaries are well managed and aligned with the help of an IT-system. ERP users need to be sensitive of the process interdependencies to do justice to their role.  On the other hand, Digital transformation programs are essentially focused on driving value thorough employees voluntarily and creatively collaborating across boundaries, in an open transparent and relatively tolerant environment, supported by additional data analytical skills.  Understandably, cultural permission plays much greater influence in driving outcome of the digital transformation program.

6.   Employee generational split may also become a relevant segmentation strategy during digital transformation exercise, given different level of natural adoption to digital technologies among different generations.

7.  While significant effort is required in training the users in using ERP systems, the training effort associated with use of digital technologies may not be much and may be in the form of familiarisation modules; as the social technologies are quite intuitive, and users are significantly mature in the use of these tools in their personal life. The barrier to adoption of digital initiative, in that respect is seldom lack of skills on the part of employees.  There would off-course be need for specialised skill pool, say that of data scientists, digital strategists, digital technologists, which in any case would be part of overall capability building program.

What does these differences mean for CM approach and intervention design:

1.      Communicating the case for digital transformation has to be lot more leadership- driven, continuous, and conversational, leveraging all possible channels. Stories, describing creative usage of new capabilities to drive value-adds, emanating from different sources, play a pivotal role in driving adoption.

2.      Leadership Buy-in: Leaders need to convince believe within themselves that its worth it, and what is expected of them is do-able and non-conflicting to their self- image. Leaders have to hear first-hand stories and alternative experiences to appreciate the potential of digital transformation and their own role in supporting this change. Peer level conversation and experience sharing at leadership level is a must and has to be facilitated as part of CM intervention.  Leadership enablement is easier by associating some digital enthusiast to work along for some protracted period.

3.      Policies and practices: Digital enterprises thrive on a certain level of responsible information sharing, open communication, and collaborative learning that need support from enabling policies and practices.  As a change facilitator, it is important to identify and bring forth the policy or practices conflict with digital transformation objectives and help address them.  Often it is more to do with interpretation of the policies than policy itself that is in conflict.

4.      Training and capability building:  Digital transformation linked capability development effort will involve more of familiarising users with the features of digital technologies and varied ways it has been used to create value.  To that extent the learning will be more byte sized, social learning and experience sharing based continual learning, than structured class-room trainings and practice sessions predominantly used during ERP implementation program. Games as learning tool seem to be quite relevant.  Instead of user-manuals or reference sheets, guidelines, best practices and provocative use cases and stories may be more relevant.     

5.      Adoption tracking and support: There is clear method and science behind measuring the adoption levels of ERP system usage, and segments /pockets that reflects low adoption levels can be analysed and system, training or management intervention can be made to address the cause. Concerted efforts made thus, shall help achieved fairly stable usage of the system across the enterprise, which signals reduced need for CM intervention.  In case of digital transformation, the adoption is linked to employee voluntary engagement with the new capabilities and their extracting value out of it.  The usage pattern may vary (tank after peak!) and could be due to variety of reasons.  CM needs to do much more diligence to find real reasons behind these variations and also experiment ways to spur adoption again. Digital transformation in that respect is a journey and CM has to be co-traveller on this route for a much longer distance. 

Success of digital transformation program hinges on employee engagement, supporting culture and leadership participation, and not on management dictates (with  structured capability building interventions), and that is what makes CM work challenging and interesting!

Share your experience and view-points!

 

 

TRAP-PROOF your Technology Enablement Program

IT enablement program, although well intended and management supported, fails to deliver as it falls prey to traps during the journey.  Here are a few “Traps” that spread across six dimensions; System, People, Infrastructure, Data, Execution and Resources (S.P.I.D.E.R) that can play havoc—being cognizant of these upfront help.

SYSTEM:

Trap 1:  New system will automate everything

System in its original or morphed form should cater to all users’ wishes, including complete elimination of paper documents; excel sheets and other manual ways of working. 

Trap 2:  All systems should be able to talk to each other…… seamlessly. 

In the professed new “open, networked, connected world”, there should be no barriers with regard to data flow, access rights and application usage between new and existing legacy systems.

PEOPLE:

Trap 3:  People care for new IT system, as much as IT team does. 
IT enablement once completed will help business gain better control on planning, operations and customer acquisition levers, resulting in real business benefits.  So business should be readily sparing team members for system testing, getting trained and conducting trainings as asked by IT team. 

Trap 4:  People adopt well designed IT systems on their own.

The new system offers multiple benefits and all it expects is people to enter data into system instead of on paper or Excel! On top of that, we have offered training programs, designated super users to help and made management reinforce the benefits of new system.  Human beings are rational beings, at-least in office, all of them, all the time……. fair assumption? 

INFRASTRUCTURE:

Trap 5:  Infrastructure availability is only a cost issue

You can get any infrastructure you need, provided you are willing to pay for.  Issues like existing infrastructure status, network security and risk vulnerabilities, buy vs rent decisions, vendor delivery timelines are too trivial aspects to bother about.   

Trap 6:  New system is modern only if it works on my tablet. 

My personal applications work across channels, so should my office applications.

DATA:

Trap 7:  All type of recordable data should be available in the system. Lets’ have it, just in case!    
It takes hardly any effort to configure another template/KPI in the system.  And business will religiously maintain correct and up-to-date data in the system. 

Trap 8:  Data preparedness can be managed easily

The challenges associated with data preparedness, i.e. collection, validation or migration from existing formats, need no special attention.  

EXECUTION:

Trap 9:  Assigning Accountabilities and Responsibilities will ensure delivery
RACI is more used when things go wrong for finding scapegoats, than for driving effective collaboration.

Trap 10:  Getting stakeholders meetings on calendar is Governance

All stakeholders when invited to the weekly meetings and risks and issues openly sought, should leave no scope for surprises at the last moment.

RESOURCES:

Trap 11:  Two partially competent resources can substitute for one competent one
Is It?

Trap 12:  Resource replacement is BaU (business as usual)

We have robust documentation of changes and requirements.  Moreover everyone is expected to collaborate, jell well with team members and adapt to the operating context, fast.  Isn’t it?

The above list is by all measures illustrative. 

Have you also encountered traps that have potential to derail the program?  Help validate and add to the above list.