Take for example, a B2B Sales situation, where the Customer has progressed substantially in the purchase journey before even speaking to a Sales Person. The digitally intelligent Customer has browsed your homepage, searched online, compared with your competition, quizzed a couple of AI engines, - all this before filling a form on your homepage.

How will you respond to that ‘form-fill’? 

Will you rush in to meet the Customer, wanting to seize the deal before someone else does? Yes, that could be seen as quick. But couldn’t that also be perceived as ‘naïve’ in today’s world? 

Aren’t you better prepared if you follow the ‘Action Learning’ cycle – 

1. Knowing – Get online to the Customers homepage, study their industry, become aware of their lingo, their challenges and opportunities, recent press releases and achievements, who their competitors are. Who else caters to that industry?  and how can you do it better?
2. Asking Questions:  Knowing what you know, you now have a bunch of questions you can ask yourself, doing due diligence before the call. How you as a Vendor, can you partner with the Prospect in being of better value to their Customers? How do your Products and Services compare with similar offerings available for the Prospect to choose from? 
3. Identify possibilities: Given your fairly detailed understanding of the Prospect and your Competitors, what should you anticipate as key objections... and how can you overcome? You could also sign up a free trial account on an AI Engine, ask those questions, and get a sneak peek into the possibilities likely in that Sales call. The more you explore ‘digital’ avenues, the better you understand the ‘terrain’ in that deal. Your ‘Digital Intelligence’ as a Sales Person gets better.
4. Take Action: If this is a Mega Deal, you may do a ‘war room’ where you mimic the likely scenario, and tackle all the challenges that come up. Do the first meeting, come back and review your meeting notes  
5. Reflection: Think through what you anticipated and what actually happened. What else must you prepare before that next round?  What new scenarios emerge? 
6. Knowing:  Back again to step 1...  This could trigger another Action Learning Loop, at a higher level of ‘Knowing’.  It could happen over another mock call before the real one, or the actual call itself.  Either way, remember you are becoming better at ‘Digital Intelligence’. You are improving your chances of being the better salesperson on that big day. 

Action Learning thus, is a key building block for developing Digital Intelligence. 

Deploying a similar action learning approach, one can develop competence other major components of Digital Intelligence such as Cybersecurity awareness, Predictive analytics, Online collaboration, Social Media, AI and work from home technologies 

Below is list of benefits that accrue by cultivating Digital Intelligence through exercise of action learning 

Benefits of Digital Intelligence 

Research published by MIT Sloan Management Review lists out the following organisational level benefits of skilling people in Digital Intelligence: 

1. Nimbleness: The ability to quickly pivot and move. (“We used to do this, and now we do that”.  “We are now adept at changing passwords... across half a dozen highly secure formats”)
2. Scalability: The ability to rapidly shift capacity and service levels. (“We used to serve x customers; we now serve 100x customers.”. “We’ve grown our social media presence from one to four platforms” )
3. Stability: The ability to maintain operational excellence under pressure. (“We will persist despite the challenges”.  “We teamwork online so well, our quality and delivery are consistently good across geographies)
4. Optionality: The ability to acquire new capabilities through external collaboration. (“Our ecosystem of partners allows us to do things we couldn’t do previously do”. “We excel because we have not just a Plan B, but also a C, D & E. We never run out of options”)

Such large-scale positive outcomes will demand trying things out in small ways, learning from results through reflection and steadily scaling up, which is actually the essence of action learning!