When former Microsoft U.S. chief technology officer Jennifer Byrne was offered her role, she worried that she didn’t know enough about technology. After all, Microsoft’s suite of tech products is just so vast.
If even one of the world’s top technologists worries about not having enough tech knowledge, what hope is there for those of us who have never written a line of code?
Digital transformation is everywhere — even your local coffee shop has an app. When done right, it brings impressive business outcomes. But sadly, success is not a likely outcome: According to McKinsey 70% of all digital transformation initiatives do not reach their goals.
While most leaders now know that tech is a vital part of business, many are wondering what they really need to know about technology to succeed in the digital age. Coding bootcamps may appeal to some, but for many leaders, learning to code is simply not the best investment. It takes a long time to become a proficient coder, and it still doesn’t give you a holistic overview of how digital technologies get made — even if you learn Python, you still won’t understand how product goals relate to business goals, why user experience research matters, or how to assess your product’s success.
The good news is that most leaders don’t need to learn to code. Instead, they need to learn how to work with people who code. This means becoming a digital collaborator and learning how to work with developers, data scientists, user experience designers, and product managers — not completely retraining.
For example, when non-technical, customer-facing teams in the planning and development department at Santa Clara County collaborated with external technology consultants, they created a process to improve efficiency by 33%. The software specialists were experts in their fields, but only by combining forces with non-technical professionals could they make useful products.
Most ambitious leaders are working under severe time constraints, so the time they do have must be used effectively. What’s the best return on your time investment, given your opportunity costs? The best and most efficient use of a leader’s time is to become a digital collaborator by learning how to get a holistic view of how a software product gets made and who does what on a tech team. Here are four ways to do it.
Remove choice.
The best way to learn anything quickly is to put yourself in a situation where not doing it isn’t an option.
Set up a weekly meeting with technical specialists and your team to discuss what they’re working on and how it impacts scale, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. This public commitment to collaboration removes your choice to delay.
Catherine Breslin, a machine learning scientist with a PhD in automatic speech recognition from the University of Cambridge, told me that, while she is a technical specialist, she needs the insights of domain experts to do impactful work. She notes that non-digital professionals often don’t know that some problems can be solved easily by technology because they’ve never discussed them with a technologist. This is why regular communication is vital.
For example, if you work in marketing, understanding consumer behavior is your top priority. This is where a regular meeting of the marketing team and data scientists can help both become more productive.
This weekly event doesn’t have to be longer than 30 minutes. In the first meeting, begin …….
Source: https://hbr.org/2022/07/coding-isnt-a-necessary-leadership-skill-but-digital-literacy-is