‘It’s not about the technology’.
‘The technology should not be the first consideration in any Human Resources project’.
‘Decide what business problem you need to solve, only then start thinking about the technology’.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
I am sure you have heard (or said) many of these old chestnuts before. I am honestly getting sick of them. These arguments fail to take into consideration several realities in many organizations and the enormous untapped potential in the technologies themselves.
Reality number one - Most ‘knowledge’ workers, and these days that is pretty much everyone, spend obscene amounts of time simply searching for information. Information buried in email chains or hiding in Word documents six levels down on an obscure shared network drive with a name like U:/srv0145/docs/whatthehelldoesthismean. And even if you have deciphered that arcane naming convention, good luck actually gaining access to the directory, or finding anything therein.
Even the simplest modern platforms for storing and sharing content like a wiki or a slightly more robust internal social sharing platform will almost immediately reduce the time spent ‘searching’ and increase the time available to analyze, assess, create, and innovate. But folks mesmerized by the ‘It’s not about the technology’ mantra will often delay, quibble, or endlessly debate the business issues and continue to spin their wheels since simply obtaining and applying a technology solution has to be the last step in the process. Go ahead, keep using the shared drive, make sure to ‘save changes’ as U:/srv0145/docs/whatthehelldoesthismean/project_plans/big_critical_project/risks-v27.doc.
Reality number two - We don’t know what we don’t know. There is a classic old yarn about how when IBM created some of the earliest computers that they estimated the total market to be about 5 units. They could not imagine anyone else needing access to significant computing power. Today we often make the same erroneous assumptions about our employees. Why would every manager need access to powerful workforce analytics on their desktops? Why would our recruiters need an iPhone app to capture and import candidate information into our ATS? What possible benefit to the company is there by allowing the staff to access social networks at the office?
Leading with the technology is often the best way to discover ideas, unearth creative solutions, and develop and cultivate a mindset of ‘let’s see what is possible’. Or you could continue to wait to determine the ‘business problems’ a bit longer before making any hasty decisions.
Reality number three - Technology, and those who apply technical solutions (yes, geeks like me), are almost never held in the same problem solving and innovative light as those in the traditional ‘creative’ disciplines like design, marketing, or development. This week I watched a replay of a 2007 documentary about Pixar, the innovative and ground-breaking digital animation company that has produced a string of hits (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Cars). Pixar knows that the ‘story’ is the essential component of a successful film, but the technical skills of the animators combined with the sheer capability and power of the technology must work in concert to create a magical result.
One of the senior leaders of Pixar recognized this technical input to the creative process as critical to their effort by observing – “The best scientists and engineers are just as creative as the best storytellers.” The best ‘story’ executed with amazing technical skill and creativity is the goal and the measure of success. Pixar started with the technology first, then found the best people to tell great stories leveraging the tools.
Sure, it is not about the technology. Keep telling yourself that while you keep cranking on that Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet and prettying up your Harvard Graphics pie chart.
I think a lot of the problem lies in a big misunderstanding of what that advice originally meant. “The technology should not be the first consideration in any Human Resources project” is a poor twist of a saying called Maslow’s Hammer – if you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The risk is not using technology or using technology as the absolutely final step, but instead using a specific technology to solve problems that don’t really exist or could be solved using something easier or cheaper to implement.
For example, you use an example of “information buried in email chains or hiding in Word documents six levels down.” What you seem to be suggesting is the absolutely wrong approach to this problem – for HR or IT to simply deploy a “fix” for it without consulting anyone, just because someone has a favorite technology that they think will work better. That’s just as risky and obnoxious as keeping the old tech. The better approach is to fully identify the problem (in this case: documents are too difficult to find) and then investigate all the categories of technologies that could solve that problem.
In this case, there are many options: tag clouds, better indexing of files, enforced folder hierarchies, hard shortcuts – the list goes on. After a careful decision is made on which of those options actually fixes the problem and furthermore does so with the least disruption to current employees, then a specific vendor/approach should be identified.
You’re characterizing this as bad advice: “you could continue to wait to determine the ‘business problems’ a bit longer before making any hasty decisions.” This is really the best advice you could give any organization, but limits must be placed on how long those decisions take place. Here’s an example:
1) Casual discussions or surveys (depending on your organizational culture) with frustrated employees about what they hate about the current process (1-2 days) – if they’re frustrated, they’ll be HAPPY to tell you about it
2) Put together a list of the most central problems common across employees (1 hour)
3) Look for technologies that address those problems (up to a week)
4) Implement (ASAP)
2 weeks, AND you can be careful not to barrage your employees with tech they don’t need to waste time learning how to use. What’s wrong with that?
I can only second, that knowledge workers these days need to have the ability to share information. and yes, there may be many solutions out there. but a non customized media wiki i.e. is fairly easy to setup and solves a lot (but not all) problems.
– that you need to know what the problem is. else you might end up creating more problems than solving them…
@ Richard: Reviewing all the options you have, well, in bigger companies that can easily take 3-6 months, and not just the 2 weeks you mentioned. and in the end some senior manager brings in his buddy who provides bad software for a premium price…
I am all for having a quick chat as to make no hasty decision, but you must always have in mind, that there is no such thing as the perfect solution. from my experience companies would prefer actually a quicker solution, than to wait for the “perfect” one.
Richard hits the mail on the head though – with his Maslow’s Hammer
funny is, that sometimes people also resist setting up a knowledge sharing solution (i.e. a wiki) because they are afraid of loosing their (knowledge) standing… which is bad, really…
just my 2CP