You are going to love your new job (probably)

While most Mobile Thought Leaders (MTL) members are excited rising level of interest and adoption of Digital Transformation (DX) projects, some are very concerned about their jobs.

What will they do when their current tasks are automated? What will their job be when their certifications are obsolete?

By most predictions, there will be no shortage of things to do in a world going through digital transformation, especially for people with analytical minds.

The MTL Online panel discussion, Digital Transformation Trends, incorporated the views of three industry leaders with wide visibility to current projects and problems with a review of current publishing on the topic.  The original goal of the event was to help MTL members make the case for DX with business leaders, and there is a lot of content specific to this goal in the conversation and the downloadable deck, but there is also plenty of specific guidance for MTL Members to use to envision their evolving role in their organization.

Three themes emerged of particular importance:

1. A Big Change accomplished through Small Steps: You don’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) start by thinking about changing the world. Most organizations go through an evolutionary process, advancing their maturity in things like agile project management and user-centered design as part of the larger effort.  Transformation can sound daunting, but there is a whole lot of good ole-fashioned efficiency gain and business process improvement along the way to keep the dinosaurs happy. As Rob Seemann from Vox Mobile pointed out, most organizations are still focused on projects to gain efficiency in current operations, but many of them find more transformative outcomes once they have the data coming off of their efforts.
2. If you have been waiting, you can catch up now: Most organizations that taken first steps along the DX path already. Most mobile initiatives, replacing paper forms with an app, for instance, are also DX baby steps.  The difference is that a DX initiative is aware that there is transformation on the horizon – that the way things operate now should be reconsidered and that new revenue opportunities could emerge from a reconsideration of the entire business model. As Robert Ruelas from VMware pointed out during the event, the level of automation and analysis in the current VMware solution stack goes far beyond what most customers are utilizing.  Pretty much every aspect of the data center can be automated and virtualized, providing better efficiency, more responsive security, and a significantly better capacity to capture and analyze data on usage patterns.  Jim Haviland from DXTL relates a story during the discussion of a government agency that installed Workspace One for additional security benefits and to have better control of the current operation but then discovered that they could dramatically change their technology purchase patterns, saving money and increasing the user satisfaction and efficiency all at the same time!

Figure 1: Existing tools like AirWatch (now Workspace One) already have extraordinary data analysis capabilities that can be leveraged to step into DX

3. Your next job is More Important: All the panelists shared stories of IT becoming a more central part of business value creation as part of this process. This requires a cultural shift in the organization more than anything else – where all users see themselves as part of the process of continuous improvement, where technology and technology development is seamlessly woven into how people think about addressing issues and opportunities, and where analysis is an integral part of innovation.  The aptitude for understanding and translating the lessons of analysis tend to come from the technologists in the business, providing technology professionals a heightened importance in driving and supporting transformation.

Figure 2: Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics are probably already quite possible and valuable to your organization.  Who better than you to make it happen?

The transition of mobility from being a special technology to being part of the Digital Transformation portfolio is in full swing. As always, transitions in the market place like this create new winners and losers. The difference between those who are winning and those who are being left behind is often an engaged visionary – someone who can see what it possible, engage a diverse set of stakeholders in the vision and then communicate that vision.  Your next job sounds like it will be pretty interesting.

Watch the panel discussion here.