Getting into digital – one problem at a time

You may be watching the growing trends in digital from the sidelines and wondering whether you are getting left behind.

It seems there is one new cool digital solution, tool, or buzzword every other week. Blockchain. AI. Robotics. Data Science. IoT. Cloud Computing. Augmented and Virtual Reality. And now Web3.

The wave is on and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. And this wave is redefining what skills are considered valuable and are in high demand. How do you ensure you do not get left behind, and find your own current set of skills obsolete some time in the future?

My recommendation to those in “non-tech” roles wondering how to ride the digital wave is this: develop a keen eye for discovering problems that digital technology can solve in your current job. What knotty business challenges are you, your team, or your organization facing that data or automation can address? What headaches or pain points on the job can be improved through speed or insight?

Here are a couple of thought starters:
1. What tasks can save time or money if done faster?
2. What information can help you understand why sales are dwindling in a particular territory or channel, why expenses are increasing, or why customers are leaving for the competition?

The easiest route to becoming more digitally oriented is to start with the problems that can be solved. There’s so much to learn in digital technology that starting from the theoretical—taking a certification course or picking up a programming book—may lead to cognitive overload and frustration on how to apply the learnings.

Get into digital—one problem at a time. Define the problem, explore the approaches or tools best suited to solve the problem, join communities of enthusiasts and experts using those tools to solve the problem, and start your own mini-projects to attempt to solve the problem. Even if you don’t complete it, you learn approaches. And then you move on to the next problem. And the next one.