Higher Tech (Part 2)
Technology-driven change is at its most disruptive when people are left out of the process. I realized this a few years ago at the end of a busy week, making keynote speeches each day to a different audience of Fortune 500 executives. Five of the greatest brands in business back-to-back: On Monday a telecommunications giant; Tuesday the epitome of big pharma; Wednesday a mega-retailer; Thursday a financial colossus; and Friday the mother of all defense contractors.
When I climbed back on the airplane for the trip home it hit me: They were all vastly different operations representing vastly different industries, yet all had the same technology-related problems (or so they thought) that they were trying their hardest to fix with the latest and greatest high-tech solutions.
As I look back, it is clear that the defense contractor was the catalyst for my “Ah-ha!” moment.
The moderator opened the session by announcing that the group, which included all of the corporation’s top officers, would be discussing what the company could do with its sophisticated arsenal of new technology. Then he called on me. I immediately said that I thought we should raise the bar on his premise, otherwise we might end up generating an endless and vague list of could do’s that lacked urgency, energy and passion. I suggested instead that we focus on purpose-driven should do’s,which would be more manageable, focused and productive.
Within a few hours we had our core strategic agenda. Since I’m talking about a defense contractor I can’t be too specific, otherwise I may end up in front of a firing squad. Even so, I can say that the group immediately dumped its number one could do:To use new technology to cut costs and do more with less. Why? Cost cutting is not a solid, sustainable growth strategy; there is no significant competitive advantage since every other defense contractor is doing the same thing using the same technology.
By using two new rules I have written about in past articles, Creatively Apply Technology and Look At What The Competition Is Doing and Do Something Else, it was clear that there was a better option. Instead, the defense contractor focused on a should do- use new technology to move the company out of the Information Age, where it was informing way too much and communicating way too little. It was a short hop from there to the must do: Help their people make an important cultural change by drawing up guidelines for when and how to use the appropriate Communication Age tools. Like most organizations, the defense contractor had a laissez-faire approach to e-mail, voice-mail, videoconferencing and the like. Who knew that these tools would multiply like popcorn in a demon popper? Consequently, data poured into jealously guarded silos where it sat without informing or communicating.
Notice that the solution – a set of easily understood guidelines – was not another layer of high technology. In fact, the new guidelines were conveyed via a low-tech memo. By putting people inside the process, the must docame as a revelation to the defense contractor. What had been seen as another high-tech headache requiring an expensive dose of high-tech medicine to be cured was fixed instead by changing the behavior of the people involved in the process.
To repeat something I wrote in part one of this article – it’s not the tools that are all-important; it’s what you do with them.
What’s “higher” about higher tech is that with people inside, change can stop being disruptive; it no longer comes at us but from us,and moves at the speed of delight. Technological innovations are disruptive when the rule-makers cop out or force the people who will use the new technology out of the process of determining what the new tools must do.
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Daniel Burrus, one of the world's leading technology forecasters, business strategists, and author of six books
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