Contact Us Blog WHO WE ARE WHAT WE DO INSIGHTS CLIENT STORIES BLOG Leading the way Ideas and insights from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning Digital Intelligence Series Part Five: Acting on Digital Opportunities by Abbey Lewis | December 16, 2020 Abbey Lewis For today’s leaders, Digital Intelligence is simply a requirement. No matter which industry you are in, technology is continually reshaping it. A critical part of building Digital Intelligence is adopting a digital mindset that opens one up to the opportunities new tools and technologies can offer. Leaders must also foster a digital culture in their teams, ensuring that team members are continually upgrading their capabilities. The ability to draw insights from data is another key dimension of Digital Intelligence. Armed with these capabilities leaders and their teams are empowered to act on digital opportunities to improve processes and accomplish more than ever before. Before you get started, figure out what problem you’re trying to solve. In “What’s the Best Approach to Data Analytics” (Harvard Business Review, March 2, 2020), Tom O’Toole offers some sound advice: Identify a small number of “high-leverage” business problems that are tightly defined, promptly addressable, and will produce evident business value, and then focus on those to show business results. The specific business problem drives the team to identify the data needed and analytics to be used. Quick wins demonstrate business value. For a division- or company-wide initiative, the number of business problems may be a handful. For your team, it may be just one. And its impact may not be all that far-reaching beyond the confines of your team. (Although you may be surprised here—if your team discovers a process improvement, it may well be adopted by others.) Basically, leaders need to take their newly acquired Digital Intelligence and find a problem that’s worth solving. Focus on promising opportunities. There are a number of ways to surface promising opportunities where digital technology will pay off. Look at the data. If you’re in client support and looking to improve the customer experience, see what the data has to say about pain points. If you’re thinking of solving an internal productivity problem, there may not be much data to go on, so look to outside research on what others in similar situations are doing. Even if you have access to a rich data set, it’s never a bad idea to look to the outside world. While it’s admittedly more difficult during a pandemic, field observation—looking at how your customers or colleagues perform a task—is an excellent way to identify problem areas. Ask a lot of questions. Involve your network. And while it’s never a terrible idea to ask people what they think they need, you’ll be better off focusing on what people are trying to accomplish. You’ve surfaced the problems. You’ve got some ideas about the solution. Now you need to set your priorities. Figure out the rough costs and benefits of each solution you’ve come up with and weigh the upside against the cost. You may have a brilliant idea that will completely solve a problem, but it may be wildly out of line in terms of the resources it will consume. Choose the problem/solution based on where you’ll get the most bang for the buck. You’ve identified your problem and you’ve got some ideas about a solution—now what? The next step is setting up an experiment. This experiment doesn’t need to be elaborate. It just needs to be one where you can test a hypothesis. If possible, come up with a baseline on how things currently work—e.g., how long it takes to perform the task you’re hoping to improve. Then look at how much time can be saved by doing it in a digitally intelligent way. If you have enough people to establish a control group, these can be done simultaneously. Use the results of your experiment to refine your solution. Success will ultimately depend on the support you can enlist, so make sure to identify your stakeholders, decide what you need from each person or group—and what they’ll be most interested in about your new idea—and keep them informed. Some ideas will succeed; others will fail. Even though it’s human nature to bury our mistakes, we need to learn from our failures. What worked? What didn’t work? What can we improve on the next time around? And we need to learn from our successes as well. Celebrate these successes, but also dig deep to discover what went especially well and why. Use this knowledge the next time. Even our wildest successes may have areas where we’d like to have had a do-over. Today’s digital technology offers endless opportunities for innovation within your organization. Leaders equipped with Digital Intelligence will be best positioned to take advantage of technology for business success. How have you leveraged Digital Intelligence to solve problems at your organization? Abbey Lewis is senior product manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at abbey.lewis@harvardbusiness.org. RSS Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date. SIGN UP Google Chrome user? VISIT the Google Chrome Webstore for the RSS Subscription Extension for Chrome. Tweets @HBPCORPLEARNING Trending What Makes Storytelling So Effective For Learning? The Science Behind The Art Of Storytelling What Cooking Can Teach You About Innovation and Creativity Five Steps to Implementing Innovation 5 Key Human Skills to Thrive in the Future Digital Workplace © 2021 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School. 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