Book Review: Rewired (Our Take on Talent, Technology, and Data)

I have the habit of picking a book that I must read during the holiday break. This year’s book was Rewired: The McKinsey guide to outcompeting in the age of digital and AI. If you are a business leader or just someone interested in understanding how Digital Transformation is impacting and will continue to impact our daily lives, I strongly recommend you making the time to read it.

The book details six enterprise capabilities that are critical for successful digital and AI transformations, divided into three categories.

A. Alignment on value

1. Business-led digital roadmap

B. Delivery capabilities

2. Talent

3. Operating model

4. Technology

5. Data

C. Change management

6. Adoption and scaling

For people who have been involved in the execution of strategic initiatives, this list may sound familiar, and to some extent basic. But don’t let this simplicity fool you. Developing these capabilities is not as simple as it seems. Here are three examples that I’m personally passionate about, that align with the mission and vision of VEscape Labs.

Talent – Finding the Right Balance of In-House and Outsourced

In the book, the author states, “No company can outsource its way to digital excellence,” and at the same time, “The aspiration should be to have 70 to 80 percent of your digital talent in-house, with 20 to 30 percent coming from outside the company and focused on specialized skills, flexibility, or both.”

These two statements summarize most of my conversations with our clients when we discuss options for the team structures in our projects. Critical roles like product owners or testing architects must be part of the in-house talent to build a team that eventually will develop their digital bench.

I believe that the goal of any partner - especially a trusted advisor - is to help organizations get their digital transformation successfully launched and build the skills and talent to the point where they become self-sufficient.

Technology – Specialized Tech Requires Specialized Skills

While technology has been part of our lives for a long time, its role has evolved in recent years. The author shares their viewpoint that, “The main purpose of technology within a rewired company is to make it easy for hundreds, if not thousands, of pods to constantly develop and release digital innovations.”

I strongly believe that technology has become a core strength (pillar) of a company rather than a competency (enabler). In other words, in the past, technology helped to deliver a product or service faster, but today, technology provides the tools to innovate the way products and services are delivered but also how those products or services are developed.

Mastering all these new technologies is not an easy task, and in many cases, companies should rely on external partners to complement their teams. That’s the 20-30 percent of specialized and flexible skillsets the author recommends looking outside the company.

Data – Understanding Maturity

Data is the eternal headache of any executive, especially for established companies as the author shares. Just because an organization is mature (established), it doesn’t mean their data is mature – and in many cases it’s exactly the opposite.

This lack of maturity results from the evolution of several components: their client’s needs, their competition, their (outdated) technology stack, etc. Some of these headaches are not that prevalent for younger (digital age) companies, especially due to their lower technical debt resulting from the use of many SaaS platforms.

Take the example of a traditional department store where their IT department developed their own systems to execute and manage product development, purchase orders, warehouse/logistics management, even payroll. At one time, all these systems were the differentiator that set these companies apart from their competition. On the other hand, you have a digital-native company using mostly SaaS solutions that has set up the appropriate pipelines (data architecture) to integrate, store, and more importantly analyze the critical data of their processes, customer, and competition. These digital native companies can analyze their performance in matter of minutes or hours, while for less data mature companies, it takes days to weeks to execute the same level of analysis.

Where to Start with Digital and AI Transformation

Digital and AI transformations are not easy. They require top management alignment, a redesign of the operating model, extensive development of delivery capabilities, and a long-term change management discipline.

The very first step is to make sure your top executives get alignment, and they are fully committed through a business-led digital roadmap, with clearly defined short, mid, and long-term goals. Once this digital roadmap is created, you will need to make the “click down” into a clearly articulated talent, technology, and data strategy and development plan.

Remember, you may have pieces of these structures already in place, but you will need to have deep understanding of what elements you have covered, where your gaps are, how soon you need to close each one of those gaps based on your digital roadmap, and the level of investment required for each area.

There are no quick fixes when it comes to digital transformation. If you really want to adopt a digital mentality, the transformation will never end, as the newly developed capabilities will continuously offer your company signals or recommendations on how to further evolve your operating model, delivery capabilities, and products/services.