Ep. 228 - Nahia Orduna, Author of Your Digital Reinvention: A Practical Guide for Discovering New Opportunities and Finding Your Place in the Future of Work

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Nahia Orduna, Author of Your Digital Reinvention: A Practical Guide for Discovering New Opportunities and Finding Your Place in the Future of Work. Nahia and I talk about the journey of reinvention and her agile sprint framework for how to practically work through the process, from inspiration to execution. Let's get started. 

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Interview Transcript with Nahia Orduna

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Nahia Orduna. She's actually calling from Munich. Welcome. 

Nahia Orduna: Happy to be here, Brian. 

Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you. Now, you are the author of a book called Your Digital Reinvention: A Practical Guide for Discovering New Opportunities and Finding Your Place in the Future of Work. You're also a Senior Manager in Analytics and Digital Integration at Vodafone. You're one of the leaders of the women in big data organization. 

I'm so excited to have you to talk a lot about what you're seeing when it comes to digital disruption. As everybody knows, the world has changed quite a bit. And we, I think are all now struggling with that whole idea of what do we have to do to better prepare ourselves for this new world. 

Nahia Orduna: During the last years I've been talking like industry forums about the future of work, which are skills we need to remain competitive. I've been also coaching people to find their place in their digital workplace. And we have higher reputation institutions like the World Economic Forum telling us that by 2022, more than half of us will need to have a significant upskilling and reskilling or that in 2018, they said by 2032 to 35 million jobs will be displaced, but over 150 million jobs will appear. And of course, now it's like 2020, a global pandemic has accelerated all this digital future.

We were talking about...we are forced to builds new ways of interacting of working and learning. And we always hear this thing of like, yeah, every crisis is also an opportunity. How do you put this into practice? This can be a very difficult transition if you're not proficient in this digital environment.

I created a Blueprint to help people get better digital skills. I put it like for free on my website in May, and then a lot of people were downloading it, downloading it. And then I thought, well, I got to do this blueprint. I got to bring it to the next level. So, I actually started meeting some industry experts that I know. I got testimonials from them. That their tricks to get re-mentioned. I edit these and I published the book in September.

So, it's basically the purpose of this book is to help people to remain themselves, given the current environment and crisis. I truly believe that the world will be a better place if we all use our talents and our abilities. So, putting together my expertise, the expertise of industry experts, bring in practical examples. Overall, the book is the blueprint for anybody who wants to thrive in this digital world. 

Brian Ardinger: Let's dig into that a little bit. You have these five sprints that you have to think through as far as you have to first be inspired and then take direction and learning and that. Talk us through a little bit about the methodology.

Nahia Orduna: That's the thing, like, what is remain? Remain cannot be something that I say, okay, tonight, I'm going to remain myself, but tomorrow I met a new expert, right? It's a journey. And a journey is like from the moment you get inspired that you look into a travel catalog and you think. Look, there is a nice place in Maldives or in Nepal or in California, that the more you get inspired to the moment that you are already in your destination and sharing pictures with a wall, Hey, look, I'm here.  Do you want to do this journey as well? 

It's a journey and every journey needs a map, right? So, these sprints are the map. And therefore, the sprints come from my background from Agile. Like we always look at the sprints, but yes sprinting in a time box, for example, like usually two weeks where you're focusing on the area. So, either one that somebody says, okay, I'm going to get inspired tonight. It should be like at least two weeks to make an exercise, to read interviews, and to think how you get inspired. 

And only when you are ready, you can go to the next sprint. That's the idea of the sprints of how the exercise is done.  And there are effective sprints. One is Inspiration, there is Direction, the other is Learning. There is another Networking. Finally, the last one is Share. 

Brian Ardinger: So, you mentioned Inspiration. You've got to obviously recognize the fact that, Hey, I need to reinvent myself. Things are changing. And so that inspiration is partly to figure out what am I good at?  And some of the skill sets that I should be either learning about and that. Or is it more from the standpoint of like, I want to work in this particular area, I want to go down this path. I want to change my life. 

Nahia Orduna: So, Inspiration is the first sprint. And it's how you discover new trends. What is happening?  Your area of interest. This is, for example, as I mentioned with that trip is when you get the travel catalog and you discover new places, new trendy places, you didn't know it exists there. So it is, this two weeks is not yet about thinking about your own strengths yet. It's about researching new trends. 

For example, what is your area of interest. In my mind, you are like a marketing professional. One of the successes is to up your area of interest with words like digital transformation, the future of work. Yes. Google them. If you start looking like Future of Marketing in 2025. If you start like Marketing Big Data. So, you will start looking into new information that you didn't know. 

There's got to be if you're in marketing, if you're in HR, if you're in finance or for example, if you passionate on sports and you want to do something with a sport, or you want to start out with sports, just start looking how big data and digital transformation is effecting the sports, because everything is effective. And then read what is there? 

So, there are different exercises about things you can watch, the lifetime report. And also, in the end, what I also say is that you have to write like a journal, like a journey journal to write everything that resonates with you. Think about the new ideas. Take two weeks to really get inspired and get those ideas in and write down what resonates with you. 

Brian Ardinger: And seem to follow that curiosity. Being OK with going down a particular path that you're not comfortable with, but give you some inspiration to, say yeah I really liked that area and I want to dig into it more. 

Nahia Orduna: Exactly. And then when you are ...