Digital skills alone are not enough for IT effectiveness. Business success demands a technology workforce that is skilled in new ways of working. This new game is about future-proofing the IT humanware. It requires interactional competencies that respond to role complexity and the kind of ambidextrous competency that few of the workforce can currently muster.
(**See references below.)
Business studies, even in journals like the MIT Sloan Management Review, are more and more emphasizing the need for rhetoric and communication skills—they just don’t use that language or understand that interface. So, in an astute article on reskilling in the Winter 2021 Review (The Four Competencies Every Workforce Needs, Ayse Karaevli, et al), the authors laid out the competency issue with clarity in a superb diagnostic study: “IT organizations must be able to exploit existing IT capabilities for operational efficiency while simultaneously identifying new IT capabilities to help innovate and create new customer value.”
My initial response was “ho-hum.” I was working on that kind of stuff for my Master’s in group/team communication at UC Boulder in the 1970s. The skills hadn’t been put into the business context, but we all understood that these issues were transferable to many different contexts. Yet I am immensely aware that a background in the interface issues of rhetoric and communication, in addition to presentation and influence skills, is still rare among business people the world over. Fact of the matter, many European business schools provide little offerings in the necessary communication and rhetoric skills. And American business schools, unless you’re in the business communication discipline, are giving short shrift to interactional needs. Intriguingly, the Asian Schools, Japan as a case in point, are ahead of the Europeans in recognizing the need for these so-called “soft” competencies.
But what the authors of the MIT study offer in an illuminating categorical form is a fine piece of future-proofing, highly useful to both leaders and the IT workforce—once the implications are fully understood. These 4 competencies not only reflect the diagnostic skills of the authors, but work like a self-feeding machine to help the workforce understand the business and each other better. So, here are the four non-digital skills necessary for IT success--with additional comments and insights from years of consulting with top business and professional firms.
Ability to manage role complexity
IT roles are becoming more complex largely because of the necessity of soft skills—humanware--to differentiate from those of competitors. Workers will have to collaborate with colleagues with different specialties, different languages and different meanings in different disciplines. The authors’ study found that people are more comfortable managing increased role complexity when they can see “how their responsibilities and actions directly impact business outcomes.” In effect, what the IT workforce needs today are the kind of competencies that used to be those of managers and directors who had more experience and usually more competency education than the rest of the rest of the workforce.
What the study doesn’t admit is that role complexity requires levels of expertise that are plainly difficult for many to develop, maintain and apply in different organizational contexts. It’s not just the complexity and the inevitable ambiguity that pose inherent learning and application problems, but it’s also working with the underlying, competing political issues that are involved throughout all organizations.
Role complexity, in contrast to the single traditional role, multiplies the political complexities. The weakness of so many of these business studies and essays on corporate roles is either the ignorance or the unwillingness of writers to address the absolutely inevitable difficulties of interpersonal and organizational politics. A major part of that failure is not that business writers are so unaware of the issue, but that most interpersonal business studies are driven by psychological analysis—the backbone of human resource management. And as a general rule, psychologists are far, far more interested in what goes on inside the individual brain—that “black box”--not the interactions between people, the inevitable location of political behavior. So yeah, the successful IT worker has to develop the ability to manage role complexity, but he or she has to learn also how to manage the political complexities of interpersonal and organizational politics.
I’m not at all negative to the need for role complexity: it’s inevitable. But social roles can never be taken for granted, otherwise misunderstanding and breakdown become still more inevitable. Organizational role change and complexity are always interpersonal behaviors, always needing negotiation, always needing reinforcement, and always needing more negotiation if interactions are to be successful.
Ability to connect, collaborate and integrate knowledge swiftly
These abilities assume the advancement of digital technologies with more open and flexible infrastructures in order to explore—and exploit multiple opportunities to “create value and achieve faster time to market.” The study findings indicate that employees feel able to work across boundaries when they are delegated more strategic decisions and financial resources and provided with a partner or mentor from other divisions.
Communication rules underlie and impact the success or failure of this second objective. These interactions need protocols that describe the required, preferred (or prohibited) talk for workforce members. Usually new project relationships stumble around until the bits and pieces of the talk begin to be clear—what you can say and what you can’t say. Taking a few minutes to ask whether we can talk about this or not can facilitate interactions during a meeting will save a lot of time and make the talk a lot more effective. The answer to such questions is almost always “yes,” but eventually the interaction will break down again. That’s when a smart member will again shift the conversation to talk processes with statements like “looks like we need to talk about our talk again. We originally said we would be comfortable talking about…. But maybe we need to revisit that protocol…. What do you think?”
That question will surface responses like “I’m not ready to talk about this. I don’t want to talk about this. Or, I think this is irrelevant.” In new team settings, that’s a “no.” And it will often require someone to talk to the issue offline or before the next meeting.
FYI: Articles like this one in the MIT Review. . . or the Harvard Business Review, are inevitably written by highly credentialed, high IQ faculty people who make a lot of assumptions about the underlying abilities of the workforce. The kind of comments I’ve made in the first two objectives—and the next two as well—emphasize talk realities that must always be addressed, worked with and developed, or else the very useful new humanware objectives (which ignore concrete talk skills) can never be met. Furthermore, these writers rarely have the practical experience to actually support the development of these underlying skills. That lack will always limit objectives, even in the best organizations. Although some of the better MBA programs offer communication workshops, they tend to be oriented through the presentation lens rather than the interactional. That’s helpful, but doesn’t place the focus where it needs to be—interpersonal, team talk, which is actually more complicated than presentational speaking—when done well. Although some talk work is done in the baccalaureate or MBA program, the most helpful training now available will be added after a few years of work experience, when employees have experienced the talk realities—and more clearly recognize their needs.
Ability to embrace and manage contradictory demands
In an intriguing choice, the authors use the term “ambidextrous” to explain the ability to embrace and manage contradictory demands. The typical use of the term refers to the use of both left and right hands with equal ease. Think about it: ambidexterity is a rare ability. “Instead of seeing inconsistencies as a threat, they view them as a source of creative conflict that can be built upon to create value. This requires those employees to learn to live with dual agendas and conflicting time horizons.”
An underlying spin-off from the widespread use of Agile tech processes is the ability to surface conflicts and contradictory demands. That expertise is built unconsciously on the simplicity theory, a characteristic orientation of American individualism. Simplicity is built into technology and most vocations, including nearly all the science and social science occupations. However, if you think seriously about contradictory demands, you might recognize that you’re at a decision juncture. The more typical mindset move is to simplify, but the way to innovate is to view the conflicts as a source of creativity that can be built upon to create value. This requires workforce members to learn to live with dual agendas—and the inevitable conflicting time horizons—to create customer value.
Whether you’re aware of it or not, everyone keeps a running account of what’s happening to them, what it means and what they should do about it. Several studies of the “account,” a specific mindset, found that the traditional, widely used orientation to what’s “going on,” puts a very strong evaluation on each and every piece of information. Something good led to a very strong positive label, while something bad led to a very strong negative label. People who are able to embrace and manage contradictory demands keep a running account too, but they rein in their demands and judgments. In effect, they hang the information in the air. They keep asking what does this conflict mean, how can I use these contradictions, how does this compare to other options, what can be learned from this, who can I talk to, who are the experts, what am I missing? These are some of the questions underlying creative action.
My first vocation (1962 to 1973) was especially demanding of the creative. I had to create one or two novel products nearly every week. A very demanding schedule!! What I found supported the mindset studies of Carol Dweck long before she put her conclusions in print. Dweck was fascinated by my early model, indicating in a couple conversations that my process, which used questions like these in the paragraph above, clearly reflected her conclusions. In addition, I learned early on that I also got better results by the work of my unconscious brain in my nightly sleeping. John Bargh’s work, dating from the turn of this century, not only supports that work of the unconscious brain, but clarifies that brain’s processes and how it impacts nearly all decisionmaking.
The MIT Review authors found that IT workers can actually cultivate their own “ambidextrous” experiences—if, that is—their leaders demonstrate “an appreciation for behaviors such as exploring new approaches, taking risks, and dealing well with failure.” They also found that organizations can foster an innovative mindset by creating a “development sandbox,” isolated from the production chain, where employees can explore new product, service ideas and solutions. Such company-sponsored exercises “foster both creativity and collaboration.”
I argue strongly that the ability to manage and work with conflict and contradiction are not only keys to IT success, but also a major key to effectiveness and success with life. And like the first two abilities in this essay, they are learnable competencies.
Ability to master continuous learning and adaptation
Obviously, the pace of change has become exponential in both business and technology. The competencies of learning and adaptation are strategically obvious, especially for the IT workforce. But what frustrates continual learning is the fact that it has become more difficult—and sometimes impossible-to predict what specific skills will be needed even in the very near future.
The MIT Review study confirms that both IT people and their leaders understand that continuous learning—on the job and from others—is paramount in today’s world. That’s a necessary reinforcement of what my clients understood in the late 1980s, when IT just began to become a major business discipline. The many iterations and renewals of this mandate have come up with some top-drawer orientations to continuous learning and adaptation.
An important rule surfaced by the study states that better company leaders understand that learning opportunities are more effective when work force members have a lot of say in their development. Such personal power is highly motivational—and contagious.
The Scrum mantra of “inspect and adapt” is a fine model for on-the-job learning and development. Inspection lets you see beyond your preconceptions or pet ideas, breaking you out of your own thinking and getting you to look beyond the limitations of your current perspective and context. As the team “inspects,” that action can be useful for identifying development needs and “hot” options. Uniquely, inspection surfaces learning and developmental needs that might not be clear and obvious in any other context. As often as not, we just don’t know what we need to know and what we need to learn. So “inspection” serves as a creative tool for giving us potential learning insight. The second step, “adaptation” calls for change and more creativity, perhaps in the form of running an experiment. A task that is inherently focused on learning.
The most helpful model for behavioral learning is the concept of “small wins,” a strategy focused on behavioral issues—soft issues—the area of most difficult learning. I first encountered this strategy in—of all contexts—learning how to play difficult pieces for the piano as a high school student. I had studied with two piano teachers while in grade school and junior high, but each had suggested that I was at the place where I needed a better teacher. So, in my second year of high school (1950), I began to study with a fine artist with impeccable credentials and background. I still remember that early on, I was working with some complex, fast passages in a Bach fugue and just stumbling around. She stopped my fumbling and taught me how to learn complex piano behaviors. I still remember the conversation, an approach to learning that I began to apply in grad school, my counseling and coaching, my teaching and then my consulting.
“Break the task down into the smallest bits and pieces. Say a single bar or two. First with the right hand, until you get it up to the correct speed, then the left hand, doing the same, and then put them together. Putting them together,” she said, “will be exponentially more difficult. But if you keep the behavior to the smallest possible bit—sometimes even a single 4/4 bar—it’ll be easier to learn. Then after success with that bar, go through the same process with the next bar. Then play the two or three bars in sequence.”
Her process prefigured the studies of the eminent Karl Weick, who researched and wrote the now seminal article: “Small wins: redefining the scale of social problems,” published in 1984, nearly 25 year after I learned the process from a piano teacher. Beginning in the 1970s Anders Ericsson, the well-known applied psychologist, began popularizing the same process under the well-researched rubric of “deliberate practice.” The process is somewhat similar to creating a “construct definition” of a given psych attribute in a personality test, say like depression or cynicism. However, I’ve never seen “construct definitions of social behaviors, like say “reading subtexts” or “negotiating boundaries” broken down into “small wins” or “bits.”
To be successful at behavioral deliberate practice it’s imperative that the learner break the single competency down into its smallest bits, whether, for example, listening, negotiating or “conversating.” The problem many face is that granular behavior analysis for learning is a new skill with little formal background outside of rhetoric. Ericsson moved in that direction in his study of learning with the violin and chess. Thus far, I’ve never seen granular analysis of interpersonal behaviors, the sort I’m recommending, partly because many still believe it’s not possible. But interactional skills are still another category open to analysis and deliberate practice. However, it’s a skill which few seem to comprehend without some rhetorical background. But it’s important to understand that all human behaviors can be broken down into small bits—and that includes emotions. That, however, is the task for still another blog.
The MIT article closed with a highly important conclusion: “For corporate leaders, ensuring that your IT workforce is future-proofed for the digital age makes it imperative that new talent strategies prioritize these four behavioral competencies in hiring, training and development, and promotion — because in the digital age, technical skills alone are not enough.”
***Karevli, Ozcan and Wintermeyer, The 4 competencies every IT workforce needs. MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2021, pp. 54-58.
**Carol Dweck, Mindsets: The new psychology of success. Ballantine Books, 2006.
**John Bargh, Before you know it: The unconscious reasons we do what we do, Touchstone, 2017.
**Karl Weick, Small wins: Redefining the scale of social problems. American Psychologist, 1984.
(download free on google scholar)
**Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise, First Mariner
Books, 2016.