Tech World Dinosaurs
Have you ever walked into a meeting and thought ‘Why are we using that presentation tool?’ / ‘We could have finished this presentation far quicker if we didn’t waste the opening five minutes trying to connect the laptop, only to revert to the whiteboard!’
Tech World Dinosaurs are all over the workplace and marauding throughout our modern professional landscapes – they come in many variants, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores – it’s a complex world out there and the ecosystem we all live and work in is evolving every day.
Some dinosaurs are simply fighting a losing battle and clinging on for dear life until the next generation takes things off their plate – these guys don’t worry about the fact they are slipping further behind every day. They simply stick to their guns, maintaining solace in the fact they know their stuff – they can deliver against a target and “nothing beats a trusty Montblanc and leather-bound notebook when walking into a final negotiation round.”
This series on Tech World Dinosaurs will highlight how technology is impacting and shaping our professional ecosystems – the players involved, the pitfalls, but most importantly, the opportunities. Technological development is not about destroying the past and starting over, it’s about taking the generations of failings, learnings, successes & paradigm shifts together to keep driving our potential to new heights.
The obvious Banana Skin
As we continue to develop newer and more agile technologies, we also expand on the gap between generational thinking and the application of new products, services and solutions in our workplace. Something which we see over and over again is the <Generational Technology Gap> (further detail in separate series, insight bleed through) which frustrates and entertains us all on an almost daily basis.
As outlined in our opener, we’ve all experienced that moment when someone couldn’t get the tech working for the pitch or their demo or whatever the occasion warranted. We are entering an age where the generational overlaps within companies are far more significant than we’ve ever experienced before. We have experienced (often decision makers at senior level) executives that remember a world without touchscreens and smartphones among other significant shifts in what was available to us as we discuss in our <Generational Technology Gap> series.
The fresh-faced ‘rookies’ are coming in with radical ideas about APIs, cloud services and instant information access at your fingertips on any device. How does this affect the cohesion and culture within an organisation?
Without perhaps even being aware of it, the very structure of the organisation is causing an environment with friction towards new technology adoption. Historically management knows best, they’ve seen things, done things, negotiated the big deals – they know what the workforce needs to be successful.
In the environment that is rapidly evolving all around us the myriad solutions at our disposal are so closely aligned that someone who is not interested or ‘educated’ in technology will fail to see the differences, even the potential benefits that can be realised.
Success in this space becomes a delicate balancing act of not just the right solution, but also the right cultural mindset to prime the organisation to accept the new ‘intruder’ entering the crucible of the organisation’s operations.
The Elephant in the Room
The next thing to consider is the elephant in the room – CLOUD!!!
What is The Cloud how does it work, who owns it, who manages it, who uses it???
These may seem trivial questions, and for the most part they are – we have all heard of The Cloud, we know how it works don’t we?
Not everyone – that’s the problem, and assumptions here cause further gaps, friction, even outright conflict when poor decisions are made and leadership is undermined.
Something which we will discuss at length is the opportunity that is being supported and ignored simultaneously in this space.
Countless companies that are longstanding, major players are creating Cloud offerings, integrating their traditional systems and platforms to Cloud environments and “enabling the BYOD workforce of the future”.
Or are they??
When companies offer these services, pay attention – are they truly bringing a Cloud solution to the table or are they just creating a pseudo environment allowing to continue to use your comfortable on-premise / analogue-esque services within a Cloud interface of a recent platform that is a true Cloud environment?
This is the real elephant, not just in the room, but out THERE in the world, everywhere – it’s what’s scaring all the dinosaurs…
Passing the Torch
As this is the opening salvo in our Tech World Dinosaurs series I wish to leave you with a final thought based on what we have already covered:
What happens when the decision makers and executives of today become the Centennials of tomorrow?!!
We’re no longer dealing with people that remember taking copious notes on legal pads and scribbling Q4 strategy across multiple A1 flipboards to then carry the evidence with them for weeks as we formalise the roadmap for next year.
These guys take pictures of manual work because it’s nostalgic and displays prominence, expertise, dedication and above all TIME.
What type of workplace will you be involved in when everyone expects a touch screen interface to be the norm, and you no longer have to be concerned with a VGA – HDMI adaptor to get your slide deck up on the big screen?
You’re simply swiping your content to the edge of your device as it seamlessly replicates on any surface that is linked into your office ecosystem…
The opportunities are there, but YOU need to expose yourself to them, or at the very least, to a group of people that can help you see them, even if not fully understand them.