The “Expert Talk Series: Remaking the Industry Agenda in the Shadow of the Pandemic”, co-organized by the Unilab Foundation and Makati Business Club, aims to provide a discussion on Industry 4.0 (Advanced Manufacturing sectors) latest data and case studies of professors focused on different parts of the world, underpinned by the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic and global value chain.

During the first session held on 02 October 2020, Dr. George Westerman, Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, explored on how to manage the people side of COVID-19. He emphasized the importance of harnessing digitalization and technology during the transformation of a company. In order to cope up with the rapid changes in in the digital world, the organization must be able to cope with the pace of digitalization. According to him, it rather challenges the capacity of the company to manage its path to transformation and the kind of leadership that it exercises. By now, companies have changed in one way or another. But the real question is, “did they change ‘well’?”. The continuous cycle of change that is happening every now and then challenges people more than it challenges existing tools and processes.

The culture of a company, he said, is an important driver to ensure the company’s ability to respond to challenges. In the current context, companies should have a “digital-ready culture” – a shared and mutually-reinforcing set of values and practices that enable high performance in service of innovation and execution in a digital world. The values of impact, speed, autonomy, and openness are essential for a company’s culture to become digital-ready.

Changing the way people learn in a digital environment is also a must. Dr. Westerman made mention of the new strategic model of learning and development called ‘The Transformer CLO’ which involved three big changes in the goals, methods, and departments. It is now apparent that online trainings are becoming a thing of the digital world and experiences became the primary basis of learning.

Lastly, he also expressed that it is essential to build on human skills or soft skills. These are the solution that will ensure that people have the capability to respond efficiently and accurately in anything that they do, not only at work but also on a personal level. These include, but are not limited to, civic and cultural literacy, digital literacy, financial literacy, and organizational literacy. At the onset of the pandemic, companies made fast changes in order to survive. Now, it is time for the companies to build enduring capability by investing on the people side.

 

 

 

 

 

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