Summing Up
To remain sane and relevant, must we smell the flowers as well as the ozone? This month's question of how much obsolescence business and society (and by implication, we as managers) can absorb brought out both the poets and the engineers among respondents. Most exhorted organizations and their leaders to recognize the importance and take advantage of advances in communications technology to remain relevant and competitive. J. W. Carpenter reported that "Our study … shows that … without the capacity to absorb [information] technology … [a] business has low value and poor survival potential. My guess [is that] the societal effects are just as important." Ganesh Ram commented, "We laugh at the Luddites who destroyed factories in the early Nineteenth Century but … the cost of obsolescence is more rapidly and mercilessly extracted in the always-connected, globally interlinked economy. Nothing is perfect but there is no time-out that we sometimes wish we could call." At the same time, Tom Dolembo reminded us, "After many years in the digital race, I discovered it is just electrons and silicon, nothing else …. Before you ask about reality, put your hands into earth. Listen carefully to a friend over a cup of tea. I cannot imagine, now, a prosperity that will be based on smoke, mirrors, silicon, electrons, and tiny fingers."
Many argued from the proposition that "it all depends." As Todd Mounce put it, "First, an organization will only absorb as much communications technology as the culture, training, and mentality of the individuals working in the organization will allow … the organization should only absorb as much communications technology as is required to efficiently run [it] …." Terry Leach said, "It depends on the existing organization communication patterns" [such as bottom up plus top down, outside in—from customers—plus inside out, etc.].
Challenges of new information technologies and how to deal with them were the focus of several comments. Deepak Alse said, "The key challenge is in ensuring that information moves where needed and not everywhere it can." [This reflects a complaint I came across recently from a senior manager that a problem with the latest generation entering business ranks is that "everyone reports to everyone else everything they do all the time."] On a more personal level, C. J. Cullinane reported that "I work with keeping up with technology but … the newspapers and books are my anchor…. [They also leave] a good audit trail." Phil Clark said, "Ultimately, when a person becomes overwhelmed they will simplify. That has its own danger. Our viewpoint will become more isolated and narrow." Brenda Walker, who chided me for not supplying the Internet link to the David Brooks column that I referenced, suggested that "trusted sources of information filtering … will have increased value [regardless of the medium used]." Mark Chussil said, "…the individual takes on a greater burden to think critically and decide wisely …. When I feel myself drowning in data (or in fear of the lack of data), [I return to the question], What's the problem?"
Will Harwood and Michael Norman posed what for them are more interesting questions that we might consider. In Harwood's words, "How do we measure the quality of the information we receive? What makes information worth acting upon? When is information certain enough?" And Norman asked, "What will be the roles of managers as we know them today …? What skills, knowledge, attitudes and experience will free them from the past and help them become successful … leaders in ever-evolving tech-contributor spheres?" What do you think?
Original Article
The other night a classmate and long-time friend, at the end of a phone conversation, said, "I'll email you with the directions to our place." Then he paused and said, "That sounds pretty old-fashioned, doesn't it?" It's possible that, along with me, he is beginning to feel out of date. The irony is that he is the retired CEO of one of the largest companies fostering the networking revolution.
The facts are undeniable. Watch an old movie in which people remove the telephone receiver from the wall, type (either manually or electronically), and even begin to email (as in "You've Got Mail!"). It's always good for a laugh. Then you remember that, as I did, you only scrapped your manual typewriter 17 years ago, put away the carbon paper in favor of the "cc" line on email only 12 years ago, and began watching video on your computer just a few years ago. Now there is a growing sense that the desktops and laptops of the past are giving way to netbooks that are a highly-portable cross between the iPhone and the old laptop.
Language has been condensed with the size of tech devices and the continued clumsiness of our thumbs. Along with it, some fear that there is a growing inability or unwillingness of readers or listeners to sustain an attention span of more than a few lines or a couple of minutes. As a result, entire industries, such as newspaper publishing, are dying along with a generation that buys and reads them. People are reading news online, but they are willing to pay very little for it. As a result, in-depth investigative reporting (by pros, not those often sharing their ignorance on blog sites) that is revealing many aspects of the current economic bust—including fraud and questionable management decisions—is dying as well. Along with this there is a gnawing sense that investigative reporting will not even be missed by the coming generations of tech-savvy citizens and managers.
What of the impact on investors and the financial community? Columnist David Brooks has suggested that new technologies actually fostered lightning-fast investment decisions in the recent economic meltdown, but contributed to a herd-like mentality that exaggerated swings in attitudes and markets.
How are new technologies affecting organizations? Are "tech cliques" forming around such media as Facebook, YouTube, and now Twitter? How does that affect the transfer of information that used to take place around the water cooler? And what about those of us with management responsibilities who feel that we are losing the communications race and missing out on a growing part of the "action" in our organizations? In the past, given the snail's pace of tech change, we could wait out the next generation of managers and their technologies until we retired. That may no longer be possible. What are you doing, as hockey great Wayne Gretzky is quoted as saying, to "skate to where the puck is going to be"?
What rate of change in communications technology can the organization absorb? What do you think?
To read more:
David Brooks, "Greed and Stupidity," The New York Times, April 3, 2009, p. A23.
The new technologies are profoundly affecting all types of organizations. Actually, they have placed CEO's/Managers in uncharted territory. Very few of the Top Bosses can understand the recent tech lifestyle and mores.
The mode of communications within the organization has also changed and it has challenged the traditional monopoly on information by higher management.One can only sympathies with the top managers with limited tech skills because they lack the essential tools to understands the medium and the message. They must feel left out and their role bit diminished.
The problem that is going to pose a serious challenge to almost all organizations is how to incorporate the latest technology in organization architecture and enhance the human skills/culture to extract maximum benefit out of it. The tech pace can rattle and disappoint many who can not run fast enough.
In the end, fortunately or unfortunately, no one knows the destiny.
Faster and more responsive communication tools dont necessarily improve the quality of decisions made in an organisation.On the contrary, they perpetrate a short term operational view of events. An organisation can absorb a lot of change in communication modes if the demographics and organisation's structure provide scope for diversity. Forcing an entire's organisation into alignment with a specific communication technology, is a sure recipe for clogging clarity and decision-making skills. No two human beings communicate in the same manner..so diversity is the key. The idea is to allow scope for various forms of communication depending on context, priority and capabilities!
If it is a vulture investment project, the first thing we would attempt to estimate is the capacity of the human capital in the organization to master the needed technology. That estimate being low, the business is at best a liquidation candidate.
That is how important technological absorption is to the future of modern business. Without the capacity to absorb technology the business has low value and poor survival potential. My guess the societal effects are just as important.
There are a few important considerations involving the changes in technology and its corresponding usefulness to businesses and societies.
As technology becomes more rapid, more chic, and more real-time, there is bound to be an information overload. This will probably lead to changes over time in the way our brains would process the information. Only till about a decade ago, we used to wait for the newspaper to deliver the full dope on events and stories. Editorials and op-ed columns had a place under the sun and intellectuals were read keenly and indeed helped shape public opinion and business strategies. Then came the Internet, which fundamentally changed the nature of Information dissemination.
Now, information gathering is becoming an art: One needs to decide what one wants and then head to a popular search engine or related websites that will in most cases have all the information one is looking for. So the time-lag between information generation and its dissemination is rapidly diminishing. Today, if it's out there you can get it provided you know what you want. You don't have to wait for the morning newspaper or the fortnightly edition of the magazine and so on. This has the added consequence too of turning information into an off-the-shelf commodity - much like packaged tuna or a cup of coffee. You just walk into the relevant store and get it. There's no thrill of discovery per se. It's quick, it's fast and it has lost its distinctive stature.
A point has been raised by Prof Heskett about the value of investigative journalism. With so much information overload, where is the scope for investigative journalism? In the old days, when much of the information was deliberately held under covers by scheming governments/politicians/leaders in cahoots with criminals - the onus lay on the daring Journalist to go out and risk his life to dig the relevant facts. However the nature of the information landscape has in the recent past undergone such a massive change that the information culling mechanisms of the past are no longer required. Today, there is no dearth of information nor is there a dearth of avenues that lead us to information. Hence the landscape that demanded the kind of investigative journalism of the past is fast eroding and is in turn replaced by the emergence of an information-superhighway. The users of this superhighway must know how to drive on it or else they'll crash out.
Yes, in some ways we can say that the SOUL of reporting will slowly wither away; that's because the pride in the outcome of reporting that reporters and journalists of yore used to experience will no longer be there. It will be replaced by that urgency to be the first - even at the expense of fallacious/incomplete/incorrect reporting - the mantra will likely be - we've got to be FIRST ones to put this on air - the rest will fall in place automatically. A recent example of Japan's hasty announcement regarding North Korea's Rocket Launch, something which Japan had to quickly recant, immediately comes to mind.
Naturally, the brain barraged with an overload of information will start selective pruning as a natural response. People will dig deeper into things they want to know - that will pre-suppose they having a rudimentary idea of what it is they want to know. The SHOCK VALUE of completely new information will probably be lost because most people will not have a clue what's happening beyond the realm that immediately concerns them. They will not even bother to find out simply because the mass of information would have become completely unnavigable.
Thus this age of techonology-driven information will likely produce a new breed of tech-savvy Readers as well. Like they say - the old order must give way to the new!
I think we are losing our ability to look at problems and opportunities in depth. I love the networking the computer allows but believe it is somewhat superficial. The amount of information online is staggering but I am not sure if it is accurate. It can be argued that the written word may also be flawed, remember the NY Times fiasco, but it does has a good audit trail.
For me a combination of online information and reseach and the written word seems to work best. I work at keeping up with technology but it expands faster than I can keep up, the newspapers and books are my anchor.
When I was going for my undergraduate degree, the hand held calculator was not available, forget the computer and cell phone. These are great times to live in and I look forward to learning as much new technology as I can. Great subject for this month's discussion!
Charlie Cullinane
What I find fascinating about this subject is the way in which instant communications reduces the herd to a reactive, or tactical only responsive mode.
I like to think of strategic development and particularly anticipation as a form of power; you may not always get it 100% right but by the judicious use of contingency planning, you should probably do alright.
What I think it is leading to is a further stratification of markets and some companies can capitalise on the fleeting nature of trends such as ZARA and their rapid response production system. But I wonder what will happen to brands based on older preferences and tradition, Breuget etc. will younger, instant generations grow into them?
But my main issue is the abdication of power, or conviction that requires consistency and value development; will they evaporate?
The real impact of the technology will be the changes it forces on society. They will be rapid and significant. The survivors will keep up. Those that choose not too, will languish...whether a person, a business, a society, or a nation. Hang on. It may be quite a ride!
Ultimately, when a person becomes overwhelmed they will simplify. That has its own danger. Our viewpoint will become more isolated and narrow. So the real challenge will become....how does the best information to impact our lives and nations evolve. Therein lies the challenge of the 21st century. The danger will be to determine what is the truth and whom to trust.
The social aspects are huge. Access to information, and to the skills needed to process it, becomes a new have/have not divide.
More subtly and perhaps more importantly, the individual takes on a greater burden to think critically and decide wisely. For all their faults, the major media had standards of excellence and integrity. Those standards may be infuriatingly lax in some cases, but there are no standards at all in networking media or in what one can write on a website. How can an information-based society work well if we don't know what information we can trust?
Professor Heskett brings up missing out on the "action" in the office. Inside or outside the office, I've certainly felt the nagging little anxiety that I might be missing something, especially when young'uns (not that I'm an old'un) suggest I'm missing the BIGGEST opportunity EVER because I have not yet "established a presence" on a network that didn't exist the previous week. Am I actually to market my company's services to Fortune 500 companies via 140-character tweets on Twitter or twits on Tweeter? Am I dooming my company to die a horrible web death if I don't?
I remember HBS Professor Raymond Corey stopping us dead in our tracks almost every day in first-year marketing. He'd let us work ourselves into an impassioned, impossible analytic knot, and then he'd ask quietly, "what's the problem?" Oops. That's another aspect of information and action: we view every factoid as a) being unambiguous and b) requiring action. I've delivered a couple hundred business war games, strategy simulations, crisis simulations, and management-development programs, and I'd say that the more-data and act-now biases are pretty much universal. I'm not against data and I'm not against action. I am, however, against crowding out thinking. Take a deep breath. What's the problem?
When I feel myself drowning in data (or in fear of the lack of data), that's where I return. What's the problem. What do I need to solve the problem. What additional bit, if any, would help me make a better decision. What could go right, what could go wrong. There's never enough information, and there's always too much data. Think.
So what does it all mean? I guess I'd better Google the blogs and face the books and arrange for faster broadband. Check back later. Meanwhile, I've got to do something.
Saurabh Dwivedy comments that information gathering is an art. Likewise, trusted sources for information filtering and recommendation (along with contrarianism) will have increasing value, presenting opportunities for journalists (and media companies) who are not deterred by the hand-wringing negativity now swamping their field.
A friend who is an award-winning investigative reporter for a major daily recently attended the Watchdog Conference at Columbia School of Journalism and was struck by the drive to create new organizations and models for investigative reporting. He sees a positive, thriving future. He also noted that new tools for information gathering have made his work more efficient and faster, though no less rigorous in the fundamental pursuit of verified facts.
Disruption and ambiguity can and will lead to innovation and success, for those with the creativity and curiosity to change and shift with advances.
Relative to shifting with advances, it's telling that the David Brooks column referenced by Mr. Heskett is cited to the print edition of the New York Times, without providing a link to the column, which can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opinion/03brooks.html?_r=1
The increasing rate of change in communication is expanding the boundaries and definition of what is an organization. Organizations which do not open new channels of communications and absorb those communications into its business processes will eventually fade away.
I'm not saying, of course, that managers must have Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter profiles. I'm not implying they should upload videos to YouTube. But they must be updated enough to see that competitors already have customer support on these platforms! They must be quick enough to read what their customers say about their organization on their blogs. They must find new creative methods to evangelize their products to other decision makers who are using those technologies.
They have to be read fast to see small, yet powerful competitors that take advantage of technology to turn whole industries and business models upside down. Organization culture that not embraces the changes might result in heavy business losses.
By bringing more people to an equal level, the internet has "democratized" knowledge. That may sound like a good thing until you realize that "popular" is not equivalent to "correct". Yet, it might still be better than the system we had before. Time will tell.
I seem to remember a study of about forty years ago that senior managers spent only 2% of their time on strategic management while it should be closer to 40% - that they spent too much of their time in the quadrant of urgent but unimportant. Has modern technology really made things worse? A decade ago an executive would spend time getting the coloured charts formatted just right. Today it is fiddlinq with the iPhone. Are things that different?
Certainly the world is accelarating, but our ablility to cope with this change is also accelerating. I'd suggest, however, that there is no harm in slowing down and enjoying the scenery.
The communication revolution has done more good than bad.
The communication revolution had removed the monopoly of developed countries in aspect of knowledge sharing.
I remember days when my friends in US would send me hard copies of books for my engineering study making me wait for weeks to read the book.
Today I can get the same over the net in matter of minutes.
The new technological spurge had brought the companies to think in more optimized way in reduction of costs, because the competition is more visible across the globe. Hope I could get some comments on my opinion.
The infrastructural change is revolutionary rather than evolutionary. By this I mean if it does not resonate with you then death is with you. In that case we need to remain in tandem with the change and revolution in order to be relevant. Furthermore, we need to appreciate that the carpet has been pulled out from under the print media. Long gone are the days when you would walk into the organization to see memos on your desk or on communication boards; we have moved to electronic bulletin bulletin boards.
As forneed, people want to contribute, feel involved and directly relate to what is being conveyed (the herd mentality and movement), and they need perceived 'real-timeness' of the information, availability any time and anywhere.
If we align ourselves with infrastructural change then we will appreciate that all the other innovations (entrepreneurial enterprise) are taking place within this space (electronic real-time, availability within the space dimension and moving towards the end user needs). Taking away nothing from this, look at Facebook, Twitter and the like as they espouse to 'real-timeness' participation and the ability to cocoon oneself to what we feel is relevant.
We read and see what we want, not what you think we want. As for the organization, it's time we appreciated individual communication preferences and needs, and address this with a specific, well-tailored medium of communication that will address the specificity of the user. Thus if we need to be leaders and actually direct the communication and decision, let's look at participation, empowerment, and the needs of people (tap into the herd mentality).
The rapid transmission of information gives the impression of being informed, of having the facts at our figure tips, and being in a better situation to make decisions. But the reality is often very different. Early reports are revised and updated as new information becomes available and a better picture of the true facts emerge. Decisions made in haste, in reaction to an unclear, incomplete or biased picture destabilize situations in ways that cannot be undone. But we fear not acting because waiting may mean acting to late. The key questions are:
How do we measure the quality of the information we receive?
What makes information worth acting upon?
When is information certain enough?
If we can answer these questions about information then it matters little how it is received. We might observe that fashion is he emphasis of form over content and today we are discussing fashion.
a) While communication is becoming easy with technology, we do not have enough of best practices on how to use technology. While organizations like IBM is at a level 5 - very mature (based on my experience) in other organizations it might be at at a 1-2 and we do not have standards on how to make it level 5.
b) Huge level of privacy and confidentiality comes to play with technology. It is even interesting to know character definition and reference check can be done through a facebook or orkut! Linkedin is another example!
Without denying the basic benefits which have accrued, the fact remains that these technologies are intrusive and have adversely impacted the power of 'human thought'. It is the power of the human thought which has made the human race the most progressive living being on earth and if that very ability is being adversely impacted, we have to be worried for the future generations.
Going forward, we need to do more research to understand the real impact of these technologies and gadgets on our quality of life, our ability to think and more importantly, have they made this earth a better place to live in for a majority of the human beings. If not, we need to steer the advancement of these technologies with an intention to enhance the well being of the human race.
Sound bites avoid deep contemplation and nuance. You cannot fully describe, let alone solve a problem in less than 140 characters. Superficiality oversimplifies--it tries to paint a gray world as either "black" or "white." This increases the polarization of society.
Superficial disscussion will not solve complex problems. In fact, the increased time needed to react to all these sound bites takes away from quiet contemplation.
Text messaging has reduced conversation to shorthand "catch phrases." If everyone is using the same catch phrases, how are we adding anything new or original to the conversation?
Is it really important that changes in communications technology be absorbed by organizations?
My thoughts: Is there a 'real' need? An organization I had a chance to work with employed a global consultancy service to help them figure out the best E-business suite for them. A product X was identified and implemented. Of course the prime reason was that a competitor had migrated recently and 'top management' thought it would be best to move themselves too.
Of course what was missing and never done was validation of the need. I do not know about their competitor but for them, a) at a huge expense the solution was procured, deployed, data migrated and users trained. The bottom line staff managing inventories and stocks etc. continued with what processes they used (had copy, register logs, excel sheets) and used this new tool just as an additional place where they 'had to' enter data. One store location in fact posted a job position for a data entry operator to perform this operation since they were anyway stretched due to other systems/processes. Result: Nothing gets better, the system was scrapped 1 year and 3 months later. So is there a need, that is the first basic question that irrespective of pace, dimension, reach of any new technological advancement in communication is the one thing to be ascertained.
What are the overheads and return on investment? An offshoot of the brief view i presented above, these are other areas that need to be looked at. Large organizations can theoretically hog technology as it appears on the horizon but the actual consumers should be only those for whom such advancements translate to tangible benifits. Basics, but yes often overlooked in the glitz of technological developments.
To me, the most interesting factor is the way instant communications lead to unconscious conformity. You'd think that with thousands of ideas flowing at light speed around the world, you'd get a diversity of viewpoints and expectations that would balance one another out. Instead, global communications seem to have led people in the financial subculture to adopt homogenous viewpoints. They made the same one-way bets at the same time.
The last line above viz: They made the same one-way bets at the same time is to me a gross oversimplification of the extraordinary set of events that precipitated the crisis we currently find ourselves in.
As mentioned by Brenda - communications did not encourage herd mentality: it's like putting the effect before the cause - the 'herd' was already there; it's likely they used technology to further their cause than technology furthering theirs.
In my mind, there is no magic formula for attaining sustained systemic optimality and equilibrium between adopting and discarding communication technologies because of the inherent chaotic nature attributed to systems. Hence, best practices, benchmarking, quantifiable metrics, quality assurance measures, ROI, etc. are good familiar proxies and part of a corporate technology culture that is evolving. These points of organized and well-documented references provide us with a framework to assess absorption potential of technologies but still leaves us in "technological purgatory."
David Brooks intimated that technology may have facilitated the plunge last fall. Electrons do move at the speed of light. So do our digital investments. We are supposed to believe obsolescence is defined by the potential to digitize. I suggest a revolution is happening. Yes we will absorb vast new ideas and inventions, and indeed we are embarking on a global prosperity unimagineable by the fakers and gamers who have dominated our virtual paradise to date.
Markets demand reality, real value, worldly trade. When I think of the years I spent believing the importance of anything on that LCD or CRT, I cringe. Earth, stars, wood, smells, these are worldly requirements. I understand now, why. This silicon based world was not virtual, no, it did not exist, it never existed. It was a figment of imagination. Those IRAs and whatever did not exist, do not exist, except as electrons racing on silicon. Before you ask about reality, put your hands into earth. Listen carefully to a friend over a cup of tea. I cannot imagine, now, a prosperity that will be based on smoke, mirrors, silicon, electrons, and tiny fingers.
The same holds true for the question proposed by Professor Heskett. First, an organization will only absorb as much communication technology as the culture, training and mentality of the individuals working in the organization will allow. Second, and more importantly, the organization should only absorb as much communication technology as is required to efficiently run the organization. Just because the communication technology is available, does not necessarily mean an organization must implement it. If un-necessary communication technology is implemented in an organization that does not need it, there will be point of diminishing returns.
In the end, management has to determine what communication technology is needed to efficiently run the organization and make decisions accordingly. As new technologies emerge, they must be evaluated with a decision being made based on the information available today. Tomorrow, a new technology will emerge that will require a new evaluation.
So far so good. However, we tend to be suffering from information overflow and too much dependence on what others have kept in store for us. Our independent
thinking gets suppressed.
Being too much attached to the screen by remaining glued to the computer takes a toll of the health as well. We seem to be reducing if not losing eyesight at a fast pace. Some other physical and mental deficiencies also crop up.
Short cuts by way of poor spellings and punctuation in the emails impacts the quality of such communications and this is dangerous particularly when ticklish issues are involved.
To summarise, while we must go with the tide and swim along with the latest technologies, we must also rest our brain more often and let it develop independenly and produce wonderful results by own efforts. That will lead to better progress and total development.
The foresight and experience only can trigger appropriate information at a calculated time duration. Whatever be the communication medium, the content of the information to be communicated is more important than the rate of change of communication technology.
A company can only afford to absorb the rate of change of communication only when it has clear objectives of how to make the technology affordable and profitable after absorbing it. If not the company loses the balance of the processes, which results in losses.
Thank you.
All of us, commenting on this page, reading this article (which we found through a recommendation from another? through the Working Knowledge newsletter? an RSS feed?) and understanding the context are, by definition, 'connected'.
What is very easy to forget is the millions of people of all ages and generations who are not connected.
I've presented and taught sessions on these new technologies to Gen Y managers who don't use Facebook and don't even know what a Twitter/Blog/Podcast/Wiki/RSS feed is.
There is a big danger that as early adopters engage with more new technology, the late adopters and those who opt-out will fall further and further behind. After all, it was easy before... you got an email address or you didn't. You bought a mobile phone or you didn't. But with the huge variety of technologies and communication methods now available, there is no obvious area for new-comers to engage with... and it is easy to be overwhelmed by the options around.
And what are organisations, if not groups of people, that include early-adopters and opt-outers?
The WWW took several years to achieve the critical mass that meant every organisation had to have a website and every worker had to know how to use it on at least a rudimentary level. It will take many more years before that critical mass is achieved with a lot of the Web 2.0 technologies (by which time many more new technologies will be around).
Fundamentally, therefore, I think we need large scale adoption of various forms of aggregators - so that those who Tweet, and those who text, and those who blog, and those who post comments on other websites (etc.) will all be available in one, portable, user-friendly place.
iGoogle is getting there, but it's only when we get that integrated with the TV, mobile phone and eReaders that we will truly see the mass use of these tools.
The capabilities and knowledge base of a retired professional in DDD or a Professor of yesteryears may be proved obsolate for the present day needs.It reminds me of Alwyn Toffler's "Future Shock". Is it inevitable for everybody at a certain point of one's life? How far one can continue to keep his ears, eyes and mind occupied in keeping pace with the surging new technologies not to be left over? What amount of stress does it impose on them?
Emerging technologies like nanotechnology, nanomaterials, nanomedicine, genetics, will further increase such situations. My point here is not to say that these developments are creating more problems. Certainly these technologies are expected to make life more comfortable. The product lifecycles are getting shorter and shorter leading to more and more obsolescence of things, systems and human potential. Everything passed or failed at its currency value. One who wants to be in pace and maintain currency forever will have to sacrifice some precious things of his/her life (like social, spiritual and personal pursuits). Some of you all may not agree with this.
I still believe face to face communication is the best provided we can comprehend the knowledge of emotional and spiritual intelectual, needless to say one require high intellingence capability. As more we rely on the technology to feed our life the more we are trapped in incompetencies. Eventually we are tired and get fed up.
The most important factor is the human factor. We are most dynamic creation so how come we rely on something less dynamic? Actually we are more becoming more savvy but the reality is the reverse, is what really happening.
These days the business and society are equally becoming less and less empathy in our judgement from generation to generation. Therefore we have to understand and these reality.
We have to figure out how to grasp the big picture.
In my opinion, current managers of small to large info-oriented organizations may have to sacrifice something they hold dearly--control of the work environment and lives of what I call the contributors (formerly known as employees). We believe we can control bodies, but information isn't about bodies. People will no longer be employees for they will have access to mass amounts of information; that is if management feels secure enough to give them access to that information. Here again, management may not have full control over the information the contributors create, manage and which they can keep.
Ultimately, concentrations of high tech and high levels of contributions will require the suppression of organizational growth through bureaucratic gerrymandering. Consequently, we should need fewer bodies in a physical space. How should we lead minds and what they contribute?
That brings me to a true dilemma for organizations: What will be the roles of managers as we know them today in technology loaded work settings of tomorrow? Plus, what skills, knowledge, attitudes and experiences will free them from the past and help them become successful info. leaders in ever evolving tech-contributor spheres? What will happen to professionalism and so on and so on?
Dire predictions of the demise of the older communication channels or the loss of good sense have generally proven untrue. Examples that come to mind are: the Internet did not kill the printed book (though printed newspapers have had to adapt), nor did it diminish the reach and importance of television.
Information Technology, some of us remember, was a phrase coined to signify the convergence of computers and communication networks. IT has willy-nilly evolved to become not a mere tool like a hammer or a pencil or a widget-producing machine, it has enabled previously inconceivable possibilities: a data mining programme suggesting the placement of a product in a supermarket, a long-tail sale on Amazon of a rare manuscript to someone willing to pay its due price, and a Twitter group providing the latest inside news during the Mumbai terror attack.
Yes, creativity human knowledge and wisdom, shall always be important. In fact, the judicious use of and new methods of addressing the downside of the new technologies and means of communication, requires the human element.
A business organization is a microcosm of the communities and society in which it operates. Hence it is influenced by and influences the larger trends. Fashion and fads will always emerge but the trick is to distinguish frivolous ones from those that indicate fundamental changes.
The cost of obsolescence is more rapidly and mercilessly extracted in the always-connected, globally interlinked economy. Nothing is perfect but there is no time-out that we sometimes wish we could call.
I see very senior professionals who have so much subject knowledge but have developed a technological lag over the years. This not only make them inefficient time wise, they also lack appreciation for the new vision. On the other hand, I see young engineers enthusiastically using the latest technology but lack solid experience which can convert data into actionable information.
What is the answer?
1. Corporations have to constantly invest in training and keep people's skills up-to-date.
2. Decide a definite minimum obsolescence as acceptable and do not allow this gap to grow at any point in time.
3. Be prepared to sacrifice short-term gains and enforce modern approach to work even if it means some delay in getting the response initially.
When we introduced word processing I spent a lot of time explaining to managers that they didn't need to go through 8 drafts just because they could, particularly when the 8th one looked a lot like the 2nd. Wordsmithing has now been added to our working dictionary and it still adds up to a waste of time doing something marginal.
When we introduced Presentation Graphics software managers who used to turn their ideas over to a team started spending a lot of hours putting together slide decks that did little to address their issues and more to exhibit their lack of graphic design and writing skills. Where they used to hold a meeting to discuss issues and make decisionsand and they would hand out a simple document or two, we are now treated to the PowerPoint sing-along (where slides are read to us) and discussion and decisions never actually happen.
When we introduced email we discovered that people's inofrmation management skills were weak at best. Now we have remedial courses in how to manage your inbox.
I feat that these new technologies will lead us to:
increasingly clogged mailboxes full of notifications about new friends and requests for input
endless collaboration cycles - because we can now get input from everyone online, and
really bad decisions because the important information in mired in the morass....
The challenge for organization and I is to be able to process this information still in the quickest and most reliable fashion and thus making us busier by the second.
I need to read my email by sorting out spam from genuine mail, I have to open mail carefully with the hope that I shall not receive a virus, I check my email with the hope that it has not been phished. The list of ROAD TOLLS goes on before I can just read my email.. All these technologies are just as vital as they are presenting us with a new forum of ROAD TOLLS. Never before are we seen backward and forward linkages relation to one single activity - Reading Emails.
We are producing information about ourselves, the work we do, ideas/opinions we have, things we like/dislike etc and disseminating it by every means. Internet has already changed the way we communicate, investigate, live deeply and irreversibly.
I don't think there is any other chance for organizations but to accept and understand the nature of this change i.e. the change in producing and disseminating/sharing information. It is also directly linked to the way we do business. Example: Internet is almost the most effective distribution channel right now. Now everyone is in charge. The only problem that lies within this change for me is the accuracy and reliability of the information.
Jim Heskett's comments also voice concerns on information quality, which in principle differ little from concerns expressed at the advent of print and to a lesser extent, telegraph. Some big differences in the 21st century include quantity and transmission mediums, which may increasingly benchmark business model standards understandably directed at "internet overload" because currently operating with reduced capacity for useful "intelligence" extrapolation, wherein lies abundant opportunity for technology differentiation akin to power transmission, currently an inefficient network now transitioning to a "smart grid" system with greater investigatory objectivity and more productive feedback loops.
The current dependency on "tech cliques" could be interpreted as a manifestation of consumer uncertainty seeking product guidance and thus represents an ideal testbed for business models focused on sourcing definable revenue channels through progressive improvements in assimilatory hardware and software. As with print, internet and a host of other highly complex interactions including industrial value chains, these modular exercises greatly enhance abilities to manage and direct information, which the recent Oracle / Sun merger may appear to prove as an illustrative case in point.
Amongst so many anecdotal references, consider how the noise of coffee houses in and around Lime Street in London transformed the insurance industry, or how traders manifesting interests under a buttonwood tree at Wall Street transformed the financial industry. In both instances daunting circumstances hastened pertinent efficiency drives, which is why prospects for communications technology may be considered immensely tangible, genuinely exciting, and realistically embraceable by organizations, and by way of fun reference to societal adeptness at self-generating primordiality, self-perpetuating adaptability and a lot of coffee-drinking, infer a positive outlook on the headline question of obsolescence.
Along the same lines, the improved accessibility continuously reduces the autonomy of the subordinate as superiors realize the ability to be continuously connected. The unintended consequence is arrested development of team agility as superiors are less motivated to provide for contingency leadership; Team flexibility and autonomy are degraded under pressure as leadership assumes convenient unbroken command and control access.