F
FRONT OF HOUSE
If your name’s
not down, you’re
not coming in
An estimated five million people in the
UK will need to renew their passport in
2019. In the event of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit on
29 March, passports with less than six
months left on arrival to the Schengen
area may run into difficulty. Employers
should remind any staff who might be
travelling to the EU for business to
update theirs as soon as possible.
Equal
Opportunities
Statements
Backfire
A 2018 study of nearly 2,500 job
seekers by economists Andreas
Leibbrandt of Monash University
and John A List of the University of
Chicago, found that adding an equal
employment opportunity statement
at the end of job descriptions
actually reduced the likelihood of
racial minorities applying by 30%. A
follow-up survey revealed concerns
about “tokenism”. A further study by
Leibbrandt revealed that including
richer written content in recruiting
materials that clearly refers to the
value of diversity, without resorting
to legalistic statements, does have
a positive effect in attracting
minority applications.
14 //
Future Talent
Let’s talk
about tech
David Brown, director of executive
education at Imperial College
Business School
WHAT’S HOLDING BACK THE EFFECTIVE USE OF
TECHNOLOGY IN ORGANISATIONS?
In the 1960s, UK business schools were set up to address a
deficit in managerial capabilities. Since then, we’ve spent years
developing strategy and leadership skills for executives. That’s
great, but today, there is a profound gap at the heart of many
organisations, where managers are feeling anxious about their
level of knowledge when it comes to things such as artificial
intelligence, machine learning, big data, cyber security, blockchain
and the internet of things.
As a result, executives might not be making the best decisions.
Or they might outsource these issues to consultants, or look to
acquire other companies with the right talent. There’s nothing
wrong with (most of) those options, as far as they go. But if
executives are only doing that because they lack the capabilities
themselves, it’s not ideal.
BUT AREN’T THESE JUST ISSUES FOR THE CHIEF
TECHNOLOGY OFFICER OR THE IT DEPARTMENT
TO DEAL WITH?
Businesses don’t have technology, organisational behavioural
or strategic problems in isolation. Commercial problems (or
opportunities) are complex and interconnected. It’s often hard to
say who is best-placed to deal with a particular issue. We need
to find language that links complex areas and breaks down silos.
For example, when banks are exploring how best to build new
offers or ways of working, they should have questions around
maths, cryptography, cyber security, regulation, ethics, brand,
governance and culture. We coined the term “data artistry” to
reflect that there isn’t just an analytics problem or a culture issue
here – it’s both.
HOW CAN LEADERS HELP?
The starting point is to foster a thirst to learn. Peer learning, courses
and reverse mentoring all have a place. But we need people to
‘do’ and not just ‘know’. Executives need to get comfortable
playing with new technologies – and importantly, combinations
of technologies – in cheap and simple ways.
And they need to know how to develop experiments, specifying
exactly what they are trying to prove each time. It’s not about
turning executives into hard-core coders, it’s about having a
sufficient grasp of technology so that they feel comfortable asking
the right questions and constructively challenging the answers
they receive. It’s important to start fostering a learning culture
now or devastating capability gaps can creep up unnoticed. As
Hemingway noted, things tend to go wrong slowly, then all at once.