I have not been regular with my personal blog because I have been blogging elsewhere.
Here are the links to my latest blog posts about why Big Data projects fail and how to attract more women into tech.
Having worked extensively in the Big data & IoT space I have closely observed failures over and over again and the reasons for failure being repetitive :
Being a woman in tech or woman in data I am often the only woman in meetings, trainings and discussions which feels weird. With not many women in tech it gets easier to discriminate the few that do exist. Incidents of mansplaining, gaslighting are rampant and it’s the victim that gets labelled as drama queen while the abusers fo scot free. Organisations that are serious about increasing the number of women in tech need to address glass ceiling, gender wage gaps & bro-culture and cultivate an inclusive work atmosphere. Read my post on how to get more women into tech.
Clayton M. Christensen, one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth, in his book – Competing Against Luck elaborates on why some companies excel at satisfying customer needs while others fail. He calls it the “Jobs to be done theory” which essentially is a means to identify customer needs and build products and service around those needs, instead of pushing a product and expecting the customer to fall for the bait. Customers want a certain product or service to solve a void in their lives and if the product/service not only fills that gap but also resolves multiple other needs and adds value, then even better.
Enhancing the customer experience requires organisations to understand different service interactions that customers experience and the potential for value addition within the same. The product/service provider should not confine their design thinking to their immediate customer but also envision the needs of the extended customer, the consumer of the customer (B2B2C). A seamless customer experience entails identifying the gaps in the customer needs across the touch-points and connecting the dots. Most of the times customers perceive the gaps in the services when they are handed from one division to another, within an organisation, making the behind the scene silos obvious.
Customer journey landscape
Creating continuous or seamless customer experiences should begin with journey maps centered around the journey the customers indulge in while navigating through interactions and touch-points, across multiple devices. A customer journey is never a linear path as the way customers engage with a product or service can be manifold. Charting the fragments of the journey on a single map, makes it easier to design the entire landscape including the front and backstage bits of the customer journey. A well researched concept plotted as journey map leads to ideation which can be refined in iterations culminating in service blueprints. Every part of the journey map jointly contributes to the entire customer experience. Tech enabled business innovation can enhance each customer interaction to yield a holistic contented experience.
Tech enabled touch points — The use of blockchain in supply-chain not only prevents fraud but could aid the customer experience in terms of story telling or driving sustainability where customers can trace the fair trade ecological sourcing of products. Smart labels and smart tags on wine bottlesand clothes aid the B2B customers with supply-chain and logistics Analytics while making the end user’s experience smarter with IoT solutions. The consumer shopping for a piece of clothing can continue to remain engaged with the service provider by engaging with the smart wardrobe apps that allow refurbishing or recycling the garments, suggest new trends based on the consumer’s preferences, help in maintaining an inventory of the wardrobe. The challenge, however, for the service provider is to be able to gather product/service usage data and provide AI driven services within the realms of data privacy and compliance. The understanding of patterns or deviations in the patterns of the product usage leads to innovating new products or services or business models like a contractual business model or partnerships with other service providers, which jointly make a service appealing, cementing the discontinuities. The tech know-how enables the design execution but the prelude is visualizing stories as part of the customer journey map.
New business models that cater to both B2B and B2C customers using data driven approaches to enhance customer experience
It is important to consider loss aversion and recyclability while designing products/services. As more and more people embrace minimalism as a way of life, sales figures dwindle. Refurbishing, recycling or donating to charity, as mentioned in the circular economy should also be considered as part of the product/service design as the number of environment conscious consumers rises.
To serve the customers a non-fragmented customer experience fueled by design thinking at every interaction demands a robust ecosystem of business acumen, big data solutions, IoT, augmented reality and blockchain implementations, actionable insights and KPIs, abolishing organisational silos and an ambidextrous leadership. Designing the front and backstage touch points that support the journey by orchestrating connections across the different interaction points with a service design mindset delights the customer by hitting the spot!
Dopamine a chemical released by nerve cells, which plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior. For some of us the adrenaline rush comes seeking and mastering new challenges and then moving onto the next.
Chasing dopamine
This habit of seeking new problems to solve goes beyond job titles, roles and responsibilities, educational background and age. These polymaths, knowledge seekers or autodidacts bloom where planted. They thrive when things need to be fixed, they use the knowledge gained from one industry on others, experience with one method leading to another. Monotonous tasks seem arduous.
“It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.”–Eric Hoffer
I find it hard to grasp that organisations hire specialists to break down silos to facilitate continuous flow of information between different business units but individuals on the other hand are encouraged to be specialists within a certain discipline. Unless there are people who can handle multidisciplinary roles transcending departmental borders, I do not see a solution to organisational silos. The divide between tech and business is one such area of concern. People with tech skills are assumed to have little grasp of business acumen while people with strong business understanding are assumed to have limited IT proficiency and people with both business and tech expertise are perceived as average in both. That’s due to our obsession with specialism. Generalists are looked down upon, likened to jack of several trades and master of none. On the contrary, the monkey minds are an asset, being able to connect several dots and improvise solutions based on their creative thinking, envisioning paths beyond their job titles.
My constant dilemma
Hailing from India, Jugaad was part of the everyday vocabulary. Jugaad in Hindi means makeshift solutions which requires resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is not part of any syllabus, it comes naturally when there’s a scarcity of means. Being able to do more with less. Doing more has to do with understanding several disciplines to put together a solution beyond frameworks and recognized theories.
I came across a book The Neo-Generalist by Kenneth Mikkelsen and Richard Martin which was sort of narrating my mental state — the nomad state, in search of the next problem irrespective of domain, technological challenges or borders. We, the neo-generalists are happy as long as our brains are being harnessed and we are involved in something meaningful. If you identify yourself as neo-generalist then it is a must read. You’re not alone, there’s a whole tribe of us, restless souls, trying to juggle several disciplines at the same time and loving every moment of it!
Settle down — this word does not appeal to neo-generalists. Constant learning and treading on paths not previously traveled are our only focus.
“Listen baby, ain’t no mountain high,
Ain’t no valley low, ain’t no river wide enough”
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