What do IoT teams need to provide your organization’s leaders? I don’t have to tell you how quickly things have changed in your roles. I’ve been doing research for the last several weeks, talking with CXOs and members of their leadership teams. I’ve been working on a number of go to market strategies.

Many see this current crisis as an opportunity to reset their markets. A hard stop followed by increasing velocity and acceleration. Many technologies were just beginning to reach their potential. We were seeing significant success with several key technologies supporting IoT initiatives.

You can learn more about these successes at the IoT Communities IoT Slam event. You can still get free tickets for your IoT teams here along with an agenda for the day’s events.

Opportunities for a Reset

Many smaller organizations see this as a reset for the opportunities they may have missed with key clients and markets. Many feel they are more agile and can catapult past the larger organizations as we go back to work.  Larger companies see it as an opportunity to accelerate critical changes in how they work with clients and partners. Very few did not want to get back to work.

I believe IoT has the possibility to transform the future of work. When I originally started sharing the idea with clients, I put an S in front of IoT. I thought super. My clients thought strategic.

Then they asked the billion dollar question. What does it take for IoT capabilities to become more strategic? How can we leapfrog what’s happening right now to take our business to the next level? What do we need from our Super, oops, I mean, Strategic IoT teams? 

Critical Skills for IoT Team Members

These are the qualities my clients want their senior technology leaders focusing on in their future leaning IoT teams. These results may not surprise you; they came out of a research report early this year identifying the soft skills in the biggest demand for professionals in 2020. See how your team matches up. The critical soft skills are:

• Creativity
• Persuasion
• Collaboration
• Adaptability
• Emotional Intelligence

From LinkedIn 2020

Breakthrough Leadership Capabilities

Which of these IoT team skills would you leave off? Many of your best performers have these skills at different levels. However, as a program manager I see a large hole that I need to fill to take my team to the next level. 

The higher skills I don’t see on the list are the ones that keep you in a leadership position, no matter how the business environment changes. These skills are:

• How to apply solutions to your unique business challenges
• Ability to learn quickly
• Commitment to continuous learning

The lack of these critical skills can make many IoT projects fail or certainly fail to exceed your stakeholders’ expectations. Which today mean could ending my career early. Sending me back to the lower level of the building with the other former technology MVPs. You know, the people who do BI, CRM, and ERP. Just kidding.

Attend the IoT Day Slam 2020 Event April 9, 2020

Here’s why you should go to the IoT Communities IoT Day Slam event. You can learn about how different aspects of IoT have become early adopter successes. I believe conferences are great opportunities to learn what works and what hasn’t. Here’s a copy of the schedule for April 9,2020. 

Successful organizations are becoming better at working with freelance talent to help ensure a successful implementation.  Which partners are the best for you to work and learn from?

For many of us, we can go back and review the conference presentation to make sure we didn’t miss something. If we’re lucky, there may be a follow up article or video that you can review. Worst case scenario, I can talk with the presenter to help keep my projects on track.

Finally, I want to know what’s happening in the different aspects of IoT. How are things changing and how can we leverage them to not only retain talent but attract the best people to your IoT team?  Great IoT team leaders anticipate what might be happening in the market early so they can take the surprise out of their projects.

The Good News for Your IoT Teams

The good news? IoT Communities IoT Day Slam 2020 event provides a wide range of speakers and panels to help you keep up with current events as they are occurring. I’d put this under continuous learning. This is not only about today’s event but the future of the Internet of Things and the many changes that will occur throughout our careers.

IoT professionals are going to be called on to do many new things in the coming year. Wouldn’t it be great to have a community to help you and your organization achieve your goals? There are many great speakers and panels during the day IoT Communities IoT Day Slam 2020 event . Pick the ones that you should attend and grab a free ticket.

I look forward to seeing you at the event next week.