As organisations adopt new technologies that disrupt existing practices and creates new opportunities under the banner of digital enterprise, what impact will it have on roles, structures, decision making styles and engagement models for employment.

1. TIME FOR DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
NOTICEABLE TRENDS
@WORKPLACE
January 6, 2019

2. 4 MAJOR TRENDS
• Role Changes
• Structure Changes
• Engagement Model Changes
• Leadership style Changes

3. ROLE CHANGES
‘CREATIVITICAL’ ROLES
Roles will get separated into analytical and creative
tasks.
Entry level roles will demand analytical skills,
supported by technical skills - ability to deal with
technology and applications, in addition to managing
spread sheet based analysis.
• Knowledge of Statistics will be more
beneficial
Managerial roles will get more subjective and
creative. Similar appearing business problems
will require different solutions based on the
context. Creative thinking will be essential.
• Anticipation will be an essential skill
CREATIVITICAL
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LANALYTICAL
STATISTICAL
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4. STRUCTURE CHANGES
FLAT & LEAN
Organisations will reduce layers to have structures that are
responsive, agile and flexible to respond to environmental
changes.
• Ability to respond faster to external changes will be a
critical success factor.
Managerial roles will get stretched. Job descriptions will get
fuzzy. Responsibilities will get linked to business outcomes.
• At middle management level, emphasis will be on
solving business problems than on skilling and
mentoring team members.
• Operational managers will have responsibilities of
support functions like HR, Quality, Finance etc.
Operational managers will be responsible for hiring
people, working within budgets, ensuring quality of
output while becoming responsible for revenues,
margins and scale.
Well-defined hierarchical Structure
Expanded, Fuzzy Role; Flatter Structure

5. ENGAGEMENT MODEL CHANGES
SHORT TERM, SKILL BASED, SPECIFIC NEED
Trend will be to hire skills for a specific scope of work to be
done within a specific period of time and within a specific
budget.
• Skills will be hired rather than train them in -house.
In-house training will reduce on account of speed to
respond and lack of availability of trainers to skill.
Skilled people will prefer contractual engagements to full-
time employment. They will be interested in working on
multiple projects with different organisations. Such
resources will also manage conflict of interest. Contractual
employment will increase in comparison to hiring full-time
employees especially at the managerial levels.
GIG IT!

6. CHANGES IN LEADERSHIP STYLE
JUDGEMENT, INSTINCT, GUT BASED DECISION MAKING
Top management decision making will show shifts from
dashboard based decision making to decisions made from
feeling of gut, judgement and instinct. Leadership will work with
more discretionary powers, apply subjectivity to analytical data.
Authority and judgement will over-ride general consensus in
decision making at the leadership level. Leaders will need to
explain the context of the decisions for others to understand
them.
Bias, personal experience, preferences of the leadership team
will drive decision making.
• Leadership level decision making will be IMPACT oriented.
They would be driven by impact on environment, society,
employees, suppliers and governance factors much more than
towards turnover, profits and growth.
• Conserving natural resources, preserving trust and faith and
not breaching the ethical use of data.
DISCRETIONARY
INSTINCTIVE
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B
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7. IN SUMMARY
USHERING IN THE DIGITAL ERA…
More Automation
• Technology will be used lot more to generate information and perform roles that human beings were
doing - Displacement of Jobs!
• Technology will also create data and perform tasks that human beings could never have done - new areas
of automation.
• Technology will drive new styles of operations and decision making that will require new skills and
thinking - new opportunities.
• Technical knowledge will be key to all types of roles
Chaotic Environment
• Support functions will merge with operational roles, making operations managers more responsible, their
roles getting fuzzy and performance linked to outcomes in a rapidly changing external environment.
• Co-existence of analytical and creative talents; co-existence of data oriented decision making at the
managerial level and instinct, judgement and gut based decision making at the leadership level.
• External aspects like environment, trust, global compliance will be more important than achieving results.

8. More filters
and longer
formulae in
spread-sheet;
Analytics
oriented
Out of the
box problem
solving skills
Queries &
responses get
very specific
Digital
Transformation
Engagement
Models
Leadership
Decision
Making
Creative,
Statistical &
Technical
Roles
Flatter
Structure
Specific scope,
skills, duration
based jobs;
multiple
organisations at
same time
Short-term,
contractual.
External
resources
Judgement,
Instinct and
Gut
Oriented;
Subjectivity
in decision
Similar
problem but
different
approaches
based on
context
Impact –
Environment
Compliance
Ethics
Role
Rationalisation;
Fuzzy; Outcome
oriented.
Smaller,
empowered
teams;
Operations
oriented

9. POST YOUR COMMENTS TO
SHEKAR@ADHISHTAACONSULTING.COM