It is about people; not the technology
The concept of a “computer” for your business has been kicking around since the late 1970s. And yet, most businesses have yet to really grasp the fact that it is a tool and not an end in itself.
Stilgherrian’s excellent post Social Media: It’s about the people, not the tools sparked this post.
I suggest that the continuing focus by businesses on the technological “bits” instead of the human/social “issues” is symptomatic of several conditions afflicting conventional business practice:
- The marketing of computers have always centred around the “bits” that will store your recipes and thus fix your problems. We so want to believe the promise-the-earth marketing without thinking. We want the magic solutions. We want the shiny new toys.
- Vendors dominate much of the technology supply chain. Many IT consultants are locked into selling only a vendor’s products. The focus is thus on selling a set of tools, and not the most appropriate solutions. There is also the tribal nature of buying branded technology – eg: designers must buy Macs – which is leveraged by vendors to good effect.
- IT managers have had to establish themselves as necessary positions within organisations. There is perhaps still a bit of leftover insecurity and thus the need to withdraw into the safety of “talking tech”. And of course, some would use this as a tool to build personal empires and reinforce positions of influence. Making IT a mere tool will threaten much of this power base.
- As Stilgherrian has already pointed out in another of his posts, there are still a large number of business decision makers out there who use the “I don’t understand computers” excuse to offload IT decisions to the IT managers (if they have one) or the marketing department of IT vendors, so they themselves don’t have to deal with it.
- Let’s not forget the brag value of the “bits”. There are still businesses who continue to show off their server room – “look at our big black boxes with the shiny lights, aren’t we a real business now?!” There are still managers who insist on the latest bling laptop purely for brag value. My hard drive is THIS big…
Now if you have read this far, you would have noticed that all of the points I have raised above are fundamentally about social concerns. Even when the technology is the focus, it isn’t!
Anyway, do you reckon a tablet PC is the way to go? Do you? Should I get one?
4 comments on “It is about people; not the technology”
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I take issue to the title of this post (and the post from the site you referenced aswell). It’s not just about the people nor is it just about the technology. It’s actually about BOTH (and more). They are both *equally* important.
The other key enablers of business processes are: policies/rules, workflow design, measurement and facilities/operating environment (i.e. physical infrastructure where the process operates ~ furniture, lighting etc).
Business processes sit one layer underneath an organisation’s strategy, goals and objectives. They support them accordingly. The enablers support the processes accordingly.
I stand by the fundamental point - nothing matters if you don’t get the people stuff right. So therefore, the people stuff is the most important.
The best technology, most efficient workflow design, nicest furniture… are actually irrelevant if the people do not want to be present for whatever reason.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that we can completely ignore the tools. The problems come when we make the tools the focus.
If we’re going off the pre-condition that there has to be a focus, then I would suggest focussing on getting all aspects right as opposed to one enabler over the others. Focussing on one aspect more than another will only lead to imbalanced - even second-rate - results.
E.g. if the human element gets all/most of the attention (in terms of perfecting the reward schemes, making sure everyone is happy - which is practically impossible in many environments) and let’s say we don’t pay as much attention to the selection of the technology or the vendor(s) involved , in this event, we’d probably end up with a bunch of happy & excited user-base, and a technology that falls short of solving the problem(s) at hand (maybe the systems crash often or the software was not well-designed etc). That would equal a bunch of unhappy users in my books and a failed project!
Agree - ideally we need to get ALL the aspects right.
I do see an overwhelming imbalance “out there” - the focus is still very much on the tools, and too little too late on the human side. I can also understand why: human stuff is messy and yucky and hard to measure. Tools are easier to spec out, list, compare logical features, measure throughput and so on.
I would suggest that when you have committed happy people, they can do amazing things even with crappy tools. Look at all the great NGOs with second rate tools. Or put another way - look at what a few terrorists can do with crappy home made explosives…
Yes, I would love to see good people practices combined with good tools. Not many businesses are even close to that point. Certainly tool vendors are not encouraging it. PCs are still being sold on clock speed and hard disk size, software is still sold by check boxes of features.