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7 Technology Issues
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THE TRUTH: People using technology intelligently is good.
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To use technology effectively, companies must gear implementation to seek advantage through the workforce, not through the technology itself. Effective business strategies use technology as a lever, not as a fulcrum. The foundation of our business strategies should be the people and expertise in our companies, not the technologies they use. |
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Consider for a moment what a totally automated factory would be like. Some would look in the door and see a wonder of productivity, working around the clock at maximum speed. What they fail to recognize is that it is not a living factory – it is in fact quite dead. It does not grow or adapt. It does not get smarter, better, faster or more innovative. It is frozen, and due to the ravages of depreciation, destined to forever be only a fraction of what it once was. |
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Compare this with a seasoned workforce, which when given a chance and the proper support, does get smarter, better, faster and more innovative. Your employees actually become more valuable with time. No machine will ever do that. Regardless of how much of a good idea a technology seems to be, it will never spawn a good idea of its own. Only people do that. Perhaps more importantly, your employees are unique to your company, and so they are the one competitive advantage that you have which your competitors cannot easily acquire or duplicate for themselves. Technology is never like this – rare, proprietary or patentable though it may be. |
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Your people then, are the key to your company’s ability to use technology to its maximum benefit – which is to say implement new technologies rapidly. Without rapid implementation, the transitory advantage of any technology is lost altogether.(Process Innovation through Information Technology) Luckily, your workforce is the one thing in the equation that your competitors do not have access to. |
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To exploit this access, business leaders must do three things. First, they must choose new employees carefully and second, they must train them well. Thirdly, they should make a commitment to their people that the new technology will not cost them their jobs. |
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Only when this pledge is honoured will your workforce be able to invest all of their energy and intelligence into the task of rapidly implementing technological change. When employees lack this reassurance, companies can only flounder in their attempts to change their technology. But when they know they have nothing to lose and everything to gain, all the stops get pulled out and the company can go full steam ahead. |
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