Carbon and Silicon

A key question that's beginning to appear more often in my conversations as we prepare to cross into next year is 'what are my organizational capability priorities for 2021?' It's a fair question - some organizations have already made deep cuts in their personnel base, while others are considering this to be a prime time for snapping up talent on the street. Many companies are rationalizing their data and analytics architecture, sloughing off underused applications, and getting their stacks into fighting shape - but others are in the market for new technology as they plan for an unknown and potentially very different future. Where should the cuts be made? Which personnel can I afford to lose - if any? What technology investments will pay back quickly for my company and industry?

This is the conundrum of carbon versus silicon. Are my data and analytics needs better served with more human skill - or more technological capability? In an ideal world, of course, we'd heap up generous helpings of both to help our associates win in the competitive marketplace. More analysts, engineers, data scientists, project managers, trainers, and stewards! More of the latest and greatest technology! - with minimal connectivity and transport headaches, of course. Unfortunately, that's not reality, and likely won't be for a good long while - even though our discipline is broadly being elevated as one of the key enterprise functions to lead us out of the COVID-19 trough. So how should these decisions be made? What does the ideal pie chart of human and machine capacity look like?

I like to think of carbon and silicon as fast- and slow-twitch muscles. We need both to succeed in just about any athletic endeavor - our fast-twitch muscles provide us explosiveness and agility, while our slow-twitch muscles help us keep a swift pace for long endeavors over distance and time. (My son plays for his high-school tennis team and reminds me every Sunday morning that I'm running out of both types with each passing year.) Carbon - our human workforce - is capable of lightning insights into where our organizations should go next, making logical leaps that machines struggle with. Carbon can quickly see how our enterprises should reconfigure themselves to address change. Imagination, ideation, ignition - these live in the fast-twitch world of carbon. Silicon - our technological workforce, some more recognizable as coworkers than others - accelerates our progress, expedites our work, shoulders the burden of carrying out tests and tasks over the long haul. Our silicon associates work tirelessly, 24/7/365, to take our imagination in productive directions - and to free us up to think of more such innovations. 

When you're beginning to plan what's next for your organization from the data and analytics perspective, do you have a vision built that needs significant acceleration to move it toward value creation and payback? Perhaps you can prioritize (relatively) inexpensive silicon over carbon. But that's a referendum on your confidence in the post-COVID demand environment you're envisioning. More likely, you're looking to maximize agility in the near term, and only once you feel solid ground beneath your feet are you going to want to accelerate in that direction. That places more of a premium on carbon for the remainder of the year, and potentially well into 2021. 

That's a difficult business case to make right now, especially when our silicon workforce is likely contracted into place for the foreseeable future, while FTE reductions in force provide a rapid route to cost reduction. The trick is ensuring that we treat our carbon workforce with the same strategic mindset that brought our silicon workforce into play. Didn't we plan to have Azure, or PowerBI, or Snowflake in place for years to come? That same mindset should inform our hiring, training, upskilling and promotion plans. Carbon doesn't come with SLAs, or branded water bottles, or a friendly vendor rep in our area to remind us of its value - so it's up to us to maintain a strategic mindset in growing and developing capacity for the brilliant insights and game-changing ideas that only our human coworkers can offer the organization.