Digital Transformation is at its peak in many enterprises demanding several talent categories.  The global war for talent continues.  Recruiters and Workforce planners are now facing steep scenarios where they have to identify talent hotbeds and scale faster.  Leading companies in multiple industries are combining the strengths of humans and technology to create bionic capabilities. This email is organized into two parts:

Role Study: The Role of a Product Manager in a digitally transforming organization

Location Analysis: Micro hubs that will be useful for Workforce Planners to track

Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein conducted an interesting study.  At the center of their research is what attributes truly created expertise.  The authors found that in fields where patterns repeat, the learning is quicker.  Psychologist Robin Hogarth called this “Kind Learning Environments”  This means the same patterns emerge again and again, and one has the opportunity to correct them.  (like in chess game – although avid chess players may disagree with the comparison).  The “control environment” is narrower and one can train based on the mistakes observed. Today’s Digital Transformation boundaries are extensive and not narrow. As a result, organizations may not see a pattern easily. There are many aspects to consider, including Automation, Cybersecurity, Net Zero Policies, and several other processes. Today the impact on Digital spans across many areas, including Digital Sales, Digital Marketing, Digital Shared Services, Digital Supply Chain, and so on.    It is simply not possible for an Engineer to design a product that will satisfy all boundary conditions.  As a result, you need a Role like Product Management to study the ever-changing requirements and bring into a pattern for Engineers and other resources.  In many ways, a good product manager maps complexities and helps in establishing a kinder learning environment.

The role of Product Managers is well defined in high tech companies, but in Enterprises, it is acting more like a glorified project manager role.HR should take the role of studying this role and strengthening this role.  And the role of a product manager can be very valuable in any area where requirements are gathered, challenged, and ideated based on what will be valuable for the end-user base.  Workforce Planners should consider the criticality of such roles in their scenarios.

A product manager ensures that the Resource efforts are not sub-optimal.  You will be familiar with a platform called Slack.  Slack is a multi-billion dollar business communications platform founded by Stewart Butterfield, an excellent product manager at heart.  Stewart did not launch Slack in its current form in the beginning.  Stewart originally started a company called Glitch – an online gaming platform.  Glitch did not take off.  But while Building Glitch – Stewart had streamlined the Engineering communications within his team through this product management expertise.  This platform was launched as Slack post Glitch failure!.  So a good product manager may pivot and make sure your valuable development does not go to waste.

Here is the skills anatomy of various product manager types that can exist in different flavors.  Within the segment of Business Product Manager, there could be roles such as HR Product Manager – Workday and HCM – for example that will help in integration and adoption.

We recently mapped Global Hotspots for tech Talent.  The map for Top 500 MSAs looked like this

An exciting aspect came in as a finding in our research. Southeast Asia, Canada, and Mexico have created several smaller hubs (these are not necessarily big hotpots yet, but an interesting trend is emerging).  The convergence of IT and software resulting from increased cloud adoption is creating elasticity for IT talent to migrate into Software Development.  A good example is a place like Yogyakarta in Indonesia, showing some initial signs of good software talent.  As these trends evolve, we will bring more details to you.