The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI

Sara was so alarmed by the possibility of a global food shortage that she felt compelled to do something to help. So she quit her job at Morgan Stanley.

How do you keep people aware of you and thinking about you regularly? In three ways: Send updates; don’t wait Create a sense of curiosity Communicate on their timeline, not yours

We define presence as the state of being noticeable to others such that focal actors are salient.

Digital tools’ inherent ability to flatten an organization’s hierarchy to allow the best ideas and information to surface is often a positive force for collaboration and innovation. However, in this case, one outcome was not so positive: Peggy, the group’s most senior technician, quit after several months.

Computers don’t do anything on their own. They need someone or something to tell them what to do. We can’t stress this enough.

But if your goal is simply to be present, ambiguity—as opposed to clarity—has virtues that can be integral to relating to others with a digital mindset.

We like to think about digital as the interaction between data and technology.

One important feature of a digital mindset is to understand that the keys to working successfully with machines are not the same as the skills needed to work successfully with humans.

For this reason leaders can model the behavior they would like to see.

A mindset is the set of approaches we use to make sense out of the world. How you approach something shapes the way you think about it, its importance to you, and how you act.8