While many businesses are putting a tremendous amount of time and money into digital transformations and other digital disruptions that change the way they do business, digital does not mean that humans are no longer needed. In fact, to the contrary, it's at this point in time when you want to ensure that you have the right human talent leading your costly digital project. If you don't have the right talent leading the digital mandate, its very success could be in jeopardy.
According to a January 2019 report, "Automation and Artificial Intelligence, How Machines are Affecting People and Places", authored by Mark Muro, Robert Maxim and Jacob Whiton, with contributions from Ian Hathaway, of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, one of the most influential think tanks in the world, "[a]utomation will affect tasks in virtually all occupational groups in the future but will likely continue to have a muted net impact on total employment" (see page 29).
As a result, no longer can organizations afford to simply ignore the technological changes that are happening everywhere. Talent is now more important than ever.
Right now, some organizations continue to rely solely on their current talent pool to design and implement their strategic digital projects. Never mind that they may not have the expertise or experience in undertaking such a critical endeavor, they simply don't know what they don't know. Without the right leadership expertise, this could prove disastrous for the organization. Duplication of costs, lengthy delays and failure of the initiative are problems that could be avoided if the organization employs the right talent to lead and implement their digital matters.
For these reasons, it's absolutely imperative that the organization ensure they have the right talent to lead this game changing digital transformation before the implementation commences. While the software vendor or transformation firm that's leading the external project may have expertise on the software, it's important that the organization has the right talent that can translate between the software vendor and the organization. That means the organization needs to ensure they have the right external talent to lead and implement the initiative.
Additionally, some digital initiatives can take a significant amount of time to implement. To this end, the organization needs to decide whether they can afford to have their staff tied up for lengthy periods of time on non-core activities, and if so, who will take over their workload. It can be defeating if an organization over-burdens its existing staff and there's significant turn-over as a result.
For all of these reasons, it's incumbent on any organization going through a transformative undertaking to ensure they have the right talent leading and implementing the project. By partnering with the right talent partner, the organization will ensure its crucial digital endeavours will be staffed with the right talent, leading to a successful, on-time project launch and limiting cost-over-runs.