2016: The year of the ‘Digital Diviners’

In my humble opinion 2016 will the year of “The Digital Diviners”. Why Diviners?  Because they need to be visionary, to see the future and anticipate change – or even, according to Merriam-Webster be “a person who uses special powers to predict future events”.

So who are the ‘Digital Diviners’?

1. Influencers: Influencing is a crucial skill for anyone with aspirations to lead an organization or to be part of it through a digital transformation. Being able to understand and relate to a business and what the opportunities are, seek out the problems that need to be solved, build an effective relationship with the tech (DevOps) delivery team and having broad enough shoulders to withstand failure – all the while taking the senior management with you on the journey.

2. Customer experience: A CX guru has the capability to transform an organisation’s relationship with its customers. Understanding what they want, how they would best like to interact, what their optimum journey would be and putting it into practice are the “must have” talents for 2016. There is a whole industry built around helping companies understand their customers’ journey. Organisations that are lucky enough to have this talent inhouse are at an advantage – as long as the right influencers (see above) are listening to them.

3. Data translators: By that I mean people with the skill to find you the right data and make it meaningful. The big data hype of the last few years has seen many of us buried in fabulous trends and graphs beyond our wildest dreams. But what I’m referring to is beyond analysis and even insights, the skills I am talking about enable businesses to understand and practically USE the output from the story that their data reveals to produce measurable results that improve profitability.

If you don’t have any (or not all) of these skills, I’d plump for either 1. or 3. as my first picks, depending on the environment you’re in. If there is already an appetite for change or even perhaps a fear of not moving fast enough, then finding the right Influencer is probably the right place to start. They may be someone from within your organization – if they have the interest and passion to drive improvement, the confidence to be self-sufficient, a deep understanding of the business and credibility with the key stakeholders, you are onto a winner. If that appetite isn’t there, then a great data translator could be just the ticket to showing those stakeholders that they DO need to act, what the ‘use cases” might be in the new world and the impact it could have on the company.

I strongly believe that doing nothing is not an option. “Why should we change, it’s always worked this way” was the attitude that many companies held to their detriment, I’m sure I don’t need to name them! Disrupt your own business before someone else does. As I said in a previous post, thinking about how you would do things if you were a start-up, without the constraints of politics and existing methods can be really useful to free the creative minds to think about how to deliver better results. Fundamentally, that’s what we are all striving for!

So there you have it – my top 3 hotspots for digital careers in 2016! What’s your pick?

If you enjoyed the above blog then you might also find some of my other blogs interesting:

• 2016: The year of the ‘digital diviners’
• Forget B2B or B2C, it’s actually You2Me
• 1 thing you need to know about digital marketing
• You2Me – the sequel
• Big Data – help or hype?
• 3 things you need to know about careers in 2020

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Jacky Carter

Customer Experience Director, Hays

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With more than 30 years of experience in the staffing industry, Jacky’s expertise spans many aspects of Hays’ business including operations, marketing, RPO and technology.  In her current role Jacky spearheads a number of strategically significant partnerships for Hays including LinkedIn, Xing, Google, GO1, Mya and StackOverflow. Her unique and invaluable remit is to make sense of emerging trends and technology in the HR and broader world, identifying, evaluating and implementing the tools that enable Hays to power the future world of work. Jacky is a well-respected and generous thought leader within the industry, regularly authoring articles and sharing her knowledge and expertise through multiple channels.