The many roles of technology

This is just a starting place for a subject that we will explore from different perspectives.  It is also one of the places that will continue to evolve in a kind of co-evolution pattern with businesses and other organizations.

Technology can make your business healthy or unhealthy.  In this initial posting we’ll take a look at some indicators of the level of health fostered by your use of technologies.  And, we’ll look at some things to avoid in order to nurture a healthy business.

There are several motivations for investing in technology-based solutions for business.  These have various implications for the overall health of your business.
Compliance
Efficiency
Intelligence
Control
Marketing
Selling
Logistics
Manufacturing
Quality control

Key issues for the application of technology include:

• How does technology support what the business is doing or trying to do?
• Who benefits, or will benefit, from application of technology?
• Does certain technology benefit one set of people in the business, at the expense of others (in terms of time, inconvenience, etc.)
• How do technologies interface with each other - internally, and with external sources?
• Which technological capabilities are mandated by outside parties?  Regulators?  Taxing authorities?  Suppliers?  Customers?
• Does technology help you or harm you in the projection of your brand?  
• How much control do you have over the coevolution of your business with supporting technology?
• What is the ratio between how much time, effort, and money goes into new technology, as opposed to maintaining the existing portfolio?

It was a technology project that gave me the first insight that we are dealing with organizational life and health.  This example of a technological intervention clearly stimulated a cooperative, and collaborative processes that directly impacted the maturation and improvement of an organization.  This also started the long trajectory of my career that involved application of technology to business.

If a little technology is good, is more better?

This seems like a funny questions to ask, but in many cases, it seems that people assume the answer is “yes”.  One of the most extreme examples I have personally encountered - NetApp – Many ERPs

I have mentioned IBM’s situation with the 16,000 applications earlier.  How did they get into that situation in the first place?  I will suggest that the root cause is the problem that we have visited several times – the lack of understanding of the living nature of the business, and thinking through the implications of technology from that viewpoint.

IBM governance using powerful modeling 16,000 applications – Maybe you think you have seen this in your smart phone!

eBay – So soon all spaghettied up

The “glutton” for technology becomes a glutton for punishment.

Helping to lift the burdens of business ownership and leadership

This is a call for a new form of 21^st Century participation-based governance.  No one of us is smarter than all of us.

To get back to the hub list of healthy business factors, click here.
To get back to the discussion of businesses as living systems, here.

Co-evolution of organizations and technology

My first clue about the coevolution of technology and organizations came very early in my career.  I hate to admit this was in the 1970s!  As an employee, consultant, business architect and coach, I have had occasion to observe and participate in a wide variety of businesses over the years.  Along the way, I have become convinced that what we are dealing with here are living systems.  I am not saying that metaphorically.  I really mean that these companies and other organizations are alive in a way that is similar to biological live, but different from biology in important ways.  This applies to government agencies as well.  In fact I started out in my career working for a city government, where I held numerous positions.

One experience stands out in particular.  It’s a long story, and I will spare you many of the details, but the short version is that right out of college I decided to follow my preference to live life as a generalist in a world of increasing specialization.  The means to that end was to focus on library work, both with a Masters degree, and a job in the public library system of the City of Palo Alto (where people take their libraries very seriously indeed!).  

I had occasion to do some analysis of the circulation system, which at the time was entirely manual, and s very labor-intensive.  The work largely consisted of filing and accessing a large volume of paper records of individual transactions.

The analysis that I led, and reported, suggested that there might be some advantage in “automating” much of this volume of transactional record-keeping.  This was a fairly new concept at the time.  This was in the 1970’s, when computer technology was not widespread.  The analysis was convincing enough that upper management agreed to investigate “automated” systems, and, long story short, a turnkey system was located and acquired.  There was a period of transition, when existing records were laboriously keyed in to computer files.  But once the system became operational, the time-saving features began to be realized.

What happened, in addition, though, was quite unexpected.  The workers whose jobs were impacted, appreciated the relief from tedium of handling large volumes of paper, and found that they could actually provide much higher quality service to the public.  And furthermore, they began to see possibilities of ways to use the computer technology to further ease their burdens, but more importantly, become more effective and efficient in the public service they provided.  It was if there was a kind of symbiotic relationship between the workers and the technology.  New automated functionality led to improvements in the work, but also new ideas for further improvement.  And, the symbiotic relationship was not with the technology per se, but rather with the humans on the other side of the technology, who had the programming skills to make the desired changes. 

In this instance there was a limitation to this apparent coevolution, because, as I mentioned, this was a “turnkey” system that the vendor originally expected to be installed, and then run without modification.  But the point was not lost on my young, impressionable mind.  There was some kind of maturing or optimizing force at work, that was bigger than any one worker, and that was trying to drive the organization in the direction of continuous improvement, once a mechanism of improvement was put in the hands (and minds) of the participants.  Through this experience I developed an intuition that the organization had a life of its own, which arose from the interaction of the individual members, but transcended their individual thoughts and efforts

To get back to the technology discussion, click here.
To get back to the hub list of healthy business factors, click here.

To get back to the discussion of businesses as living systems, here.