So who are the right people to accelerate digital industrial transformation in your business? – Asks Jennifer Waldo, IoT Agenda‘s contributor.
It should be a healthy mix of external and internal candidates, which can be referred to as “digital natives” and “digital migrants.”
A digital native has spent his or her entire career in technology and has experienced — and more likely participated in — tech disruption. Digital migrants are industrial by background but are now starting to learn the principles of agile development in a digital environment. Both are critical to the success of the modern, digitized industrial company. An Industry Week article by Jens-Thomas Pietralla and David Finke analyzed the psychometric profile of a productive disruptor versus a traditional industrial leader and supports the rationale for why both personas are needed to successfully transform traditional industrials to digital industrials.
Within the industrial organization, the goal is to nurture and develop a cadre of digital migrants as part of the existing workforce while attracting digital natives into a new kind of workplace. Digital natives coming to an industrial for the first time need to understand the end-customer and the larger, industrial ecosystem, while having an appreciation for a matrixed organization.
Digital migrants should have high learning agility, systems thinking, empathy and coaching skills. Typically, they serve in a translator role, understanding enough about both the digital natives and the current workforce to educate and coach both groups, becoming true advocates for transformation. Cross-functional leaders from finance, HR, manufacturing and engineering are great candidates for becoming digital migrants.
Read more on The digital transformation of industrial organizations on IoT Agenda.
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