Companies looking to make key digital changes to their operations may be confident in the technical skills of their IT team, but a Harvard Business Review article reports that IT pros today need more than tech skills—they must also possess certain critical soft skills.
Jeff Kavanaugh, an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Texas at Dallas who heads the Infosys Knowledge Institute, writes that IT team members need to know more than writing a spec and coding it. Today, they need to know how to find problems and create solutions, as well as focus on improving the ways customers and employees interact with the company, he notes. Those soft skills most in demand among survey respondents in a HBR study are teamwork (74%), leadership (70%) and communication skills (67%). Companies are also looking for technology professionals who have critical thinking skills, creativity and those who can collaborate, admit to mistakes and rebound quickly, the article states quoting Michel Langlois, who leads software development for Calix, a global provider of software platforms, systems and services.
In addition to tech personnel, companies planning a digital transformation will also need other key individuals as outlined in an article in Smartbrief. These include a change management leader who is skilled at managing organizational change and will focus on communicating with employees about why the changes are taking place and what they mean to their day-to-day work; a finance guru who will present the financial case for the digital transformation and analyze the ROI on an ongoing basis; a project manager who will oversee the project from start to finish and ensure the deliverables are on schedule and budget; sales and marketing pros who can help ensure positive customer experiences by communicating customer pain points; legal and tax representatives to study any legal or tax implications of the changes; and a strategic officer who is responsible for connecting the dots between the changes and the company’s strategy to ensure the strategic goals are met.