As I begin my career at Forrester, it seems proper to have my first blog introduce my coverage areas and how they interact, generate relevancy, and create value. 

The nature, design, and performance of managed organizations is evolving to accommodate drastic advancements in technology. To put this into context, technology investment has increased. However, productivity has declined from these investments over the past 20 years. This indicates that technology has been modernized separately, to a meaningful degree, from the people and processes interacting with that technology. Simply put, investment in technology outpaced the organizational ability to utilize it. Thus, the question we need to ask: What are the human-centered strategies required for technology enablement to be effective? Specifically, we need to understand three critical aspects in a human-centered, tech-enabled future to reap the benefits of technology:

  • The evolving profile of a tech-enabled leader. As leadership profiles ebb and flow based on new competencies being realized and others being deprecated, a thread through all of this is the influence digital acumen has on these profiles. The evolving nature of organizations will reorient leadership to empower people, process, and technology instead of regulating them, allowing for more democratization of work.
  • The changing composition of a technology-enabled workforce. As skills are simultaneously being displaced and created due to technology advancement, workforce strategies must show a level of fluidity that has not been seen before to keep pace. The changing design of organizations will repurpose workforces to balance advancements in technology with the labor skills needed to realize value from those advancements more often and at a faster pace.
  • The (dis)engaging of technology-enabled capabilities. As change in the market continues to accelerate, the largest learning curve for an organization managing and optimizing its past, present, and future capabilities is, in fact, learning. The potential performance of organizations will reflect measures to generate stronger innovation proficiencies to organize around new opportunities quicker and separate from existing opportunities at the same rate.

Over the next few months, we will continue to investigate these issues, share insights and potential risks of inaction, and question current assumptions around methods and approaches to solving today’s problems for tomorrow’s future fit pursuits. For now, please look for my next blog post early next week where we will explore the transition from a technology-supported economy to a technology-enabled economy and what that means for value creation.