"Closing the language gap between business and AI"/ "Women don't have to change to become leaders"

I'm posting this in honor of International Women's Day Mar. 8.

Dec. 21, 2018 "Closing the language gap between business and AI": Today I found this article by Daina Lawrence in the Globe and Mail:

Rebecca Guy, an associate at Scotiabank Global Capital Markets, went back to school to learn a second language. But she’s not trying to become fluent in French, Italian or Mandarin. Rather, it’s technology.

Last September, the 24-year-old started the master of management in artificial intelligence (MMAI) program at Smith School of Business in Kingston to help her become as savvy in new technologies as in business.

“I found the program because one day I found myself becoming so frustrated working on a project with a team because I felt like I only understood half of the puzzle,” recalls Ms. Guy. “I thought I was eventually going to have to do a computer science degree to be able to fill in those gaps because I just didn’t think there was a hybrid that existed until I found [the MMAI] program.”

Artificial intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency and blockchain are no longer terms reserved for nerdy subsets of technology. They are front and centre to many aspects of industry, and business education programs around the world are trying to keep up with demand from graduates and their companies who want a hybrid education in business and these technologies.

Ms. Guy says she knew she wanted a combination of the two in her professional life since her undergraduate studies in commerce at Dalhousie University in Halifax, where she was introduced to the possibilities of AI and analytics in the business world.

“I went into more of a business management role, but analytics was still front and centre and I realized there was a need for people that could speak to both areas and understand the data and the business,” explains Ms. Guy, “[because] you have to make decisions but you may not understand everything.”

This demand for employees that can “speak both languages” is exactly how the MMAI degree came to be, explains Stephen Thomas, director of the program at Queen’s University’s Smith.

“We were hearing from our industry contacts, ‘There’s a hole that we have in business. ... We’re hiring data scientists in AI and analytics, and other tech-perts on the technical side, but there is no common link or translation between the two,’" says Dr. Thomas. “And that’s what our program is designed to do, to create a graduate that can speak to both sides and create the link between the two.”

The 12-month course is designed for working professionals, holding courses in the evenings and weekends, and requires three years of work experience. The fundamentals of business management are explored in the first weeks “to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to financial reports, business models, etc.,” explains Dr. Thomas. "But then we go deep.”

Students in the AI management program take courses that tackle both soft and hard skills, from the ethics of AI to actually building models and being more hands-on and technical with the data.

“Building models is the core essence of AI and advanced analytics,” says Dr. Thomas. “It’s about predicting the future. It involves using machine learning algorithms to construct a mathematical relationship between the features of the input and the target label.”

Demand for these specialized business programs has been increasing all over the world, especially in cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology behind them – both of which have seen a significant surge in market recognition in 2018.

U.S. schools such as Harvard Business School, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University’s Stern School of Business have all launched introductory courses in blockchain and Bitcoin in the past 18 months.

Internationally, the University of Amsterdam’s business school offers a course dedicated to blockchain and cryptocurrencies for its master of finance students, and the London School of Economics has an online course available. Even Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in North Korea is thought to be offering courses on cryptocurrency.

Business schools around the globe have been aware of cryptocurrencies for almost a decade, but the recent turbulence in the Bitcoin market has caused the business and finance world to take more notice of its impacts and possibilities. 

It also has universities updating their curriculums to accommodate the recent recognition, explains Chris Rowell, who teaches an executive education course on blockchain through the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.

“The target for me, when I designed the course, was people in established organizations who wondered how blockchain works and how they could do stuff with the technology to make what they’re already doing more efficient,” recalls Dr. Rowell, who adds that many of these topics remain mysterious and all but unheard of for many.

“People aren’t really being trained, so we’re trying to address the dearth in the industry by training students in these areas,” he says.

Some Canadian business schools, including UBC Sauder and University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, have teachings on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, but they are often a small part of a larger course or limited to one- or two-day executive education classes.

Because these are relatively new technologies and still being explored by industry, it can be difficult to teach a specific course dedicated to blockchain as it touches everything from real estate to accounting, marketing, economics and law.

Dr. Rowell’s solution is to sprinkle blockchain throughout existing business courses. Recently he provided a guest lecture on blockchain to introductory accounting students,“ because these are the areas that students are going to have to tackle.”

As for Ms. Guy, she’s excited to see what this hybrid education can do for her in the future, as she does her part in filling what she calls a “gap in the talent market."

“I really enjoy the business aspect of my current role,” she says, “so I’m hoping I can leverage both that business side and the knowledge I’ve gained in school to help organizations reap the benefits of these technology opportunities.”

My opinion: The comments are closed on this article.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/business-education/article-business-and-artificial-intelligence-come-together-in-new-program/

Mar. 2, 2019 "Women don't have to change to become leaders": Today I found this article by Melissa Dunn in the Globe and Mail:

Global president and chief executive of Cossette, an integrated brand experience agency

Let’s start here: The generation before mine had to fight for women’s rights. Mine is the generation with opportunities. Some might say that I have advanced to a leadership position in part because I’m a woman, and that in an era that prioritizes gender equality, I’ve been lucky to have a “short cut.” To a point, this is true. But if equity initiatives helped mitigate 100 years of discrimination, I’m okay with that. 

But I’ve started to question where we are now. As a matter of course, we take women aspiring to leadership roles and set them up to be trained, groomed, sponsored and mentored. I wonder if we’re reinforcing the idea that women aren’t as valuable as men, that we are lacking somehow and need to be fixed. 

There have been many advancements in the workplace, yet it continues to value very specific types of behaviour. By default, they are behaviours most often attributed to men because for so long, work was only populated by men. But these behaviours don’t fit everyone. 

The answer has been, on many occasions, to demand that women aspire to a stereotyped idea of leadership: ambitious, confident, assertive, risk-taking, calculating and fervently committed. If these qualities don’t come naturally, then read a book, take a course, get a mentor, a sponsor, a model, a boot camp, train. 

It begs the question: Why are we asking the people with less power to do all of the work? Why is it the women’s responsibility? Why isn’t it a workplace problem? 

Perhaps it is the C-suite that need mentoring. Because we are the people who are empowered. We won’t change human nature or genders, but we can change a company’s priorities, practices and ways of doing things. What’s valued in a company can evolve. 

For example, who says that to be overly confident is a sign of good leadership? 

Or that women need to be more ambitious? 

Do we need to apply for a job before we have the right experience because we’re told that men would? 

I would argue that it’s not a bad thing to wait to have the experience before applying for any new position. And instead of propagating a cliché about confidence, leaders could inspire a culture that understands being careful and deliberate can help make the right decision, or that waiting before making too quick of a decision can lead to other, more valuable options. 

For our collective thinking to change, we need to share the responsibility. I think that in some ways, a blueprint for leadership has been welcome. But the way forward is our own. 

Do your best. Listen to your instincts. You went to school and learned. You’ve seen your parents and other inspiring people work in the world and you can model what feels right. Go to events, be yourself, pay attention, jump at any opportunity to learn. 

It’s important to say: This is not prescriptive for women. It is for everyone. There are as many ways to be a leader in business as there are leaders in business. 

And for those in the executive, I would challenge that the next time you’re approving the budget for a mentoring program, or sending potential leaders to training to help them “build a strategic network of key stakeholders that will support their career” or “take charge of a challenging situation with power and confidence,” first ask the question: “What are we trying to fix?” 

Then consider how to humanize the culture, make the workplace less threatening and more open. 

Remove bravado from the skill set required of job applicants and pull candidates of any gender forward based on competency and experience; promote people with the courage to be vulnerable, who set boundaries, who learn from mistakes.

 Have senior executives use flexible work hours to accommodate their own family schedules, giving implicit permission for others who want to do exactly that. 

Because it’s not a fix that we need. What we need is a safe place to evolve. 

Stop telling women they need to be different or learn different things and start building an organization where they are themselves. That’s what diversity means, isn’t it? Recognizing the inherent value of individuals – just as they are. 

Only then are we going to have the richness of insight, approach and opinion that drives the best gender equity initiatives in the first place.

This article is one in a series being published during the week of International Women’s Day. To find more, go to tgam.ca/careers. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/leadership/article-stop-telling-women-they-must-change-themselves-to-become-leaders/

There are 73 comments:

1 year ago

This whole era of positive discrimination is going to fail, or at least we all should hope it does. No discrimination needs to be the actual goal, and that is what our laws used to support before the social engineers started tampering with the legal princial of equality, 1984 style. As far a flexible work hours, get a grip. 

Leadership people and those aspiring to it are workaholics by choice or inclination. Either compete and win, or accept your role with whatever tradeoffs you wish to make. That's what men do. And what most women actually already do as well.

Or better yet, start a business, and run it however you want. The marketplace tends to be pretty harsh to those who think the world owes them opportunity. Other than dealing more head on with the workplace harassment of women, this whole social engineering movement is a classic example of massive mission overreach, typical of the socialists and their media enablers in everything they do.