Herbivores

The Herbivores are typically the elder generation, experienced, often decision makers / executives. They are the top dogs, the boss – been in business for 30, 40, 50 years or more.

They are the ones that have seen all the evolutions of business strategy and black box scientific management that you young grasshoppers can only dream of or read about in textbooks.

While Herbivores are not necessarily adverse to technology full stop, they have seen and most likely created their own success for decades without it.

It’s not simply a statement of “hey there’s this new tech out there people are talking about….well it must be useful, let’s start using that right away!”.

When it comes to technology adoption for the Herbivores, they need to see a ‘positive ROI’ and preferably within a quarter or two…if not immediately on the bottom line.

This is why if you’ve ever had that conversation with your boss when looking at vendors for a service your business uses and you’ve got the traditional incumbent which you know to be inefficient, you compare with a new supplier with major technological advances and somehow the question is “what’s the bottom line?”…

Tread carefully – you can’t simply list out features and tech advances if the bottom line figures don’t follow suit.

Mindset

Herbivores are not reliant on technology, they are not early adopters or risk takers with new products – they are success hunters.

This means they like reliability, predictability and above all accountability.

When looking at technology they don’t necessarily want innovation – despite what they say when asked or pitching the strategy for the next fiscal year.

What they really want is a technology platform they can rely on, that they can budget around and ideally, one that they can point to a bunch of other ‘big’ companies and say “they use this too, so it must be solid…”

These are important things to keep in mind – the Herbivores will rarely be the one to step out and say “have you seen this new app?” or “did you check out that new messaging service yet?”

They are happy enough with the solutions in place because they know the risk and can ‘control’ the success.

Challenges

The challenges with Herbivores lie in both the convincing and adoption of technology when you’re approaching them as a decision maker.

Convincing can be a game which seems counterintuitive as it is not always the capabilities of the tech that will convince them but simply that bottom line argument – if you’re looking to launch a new solution or technology but need to get the buy in from the decision maker Herbivore make sure to keep this as a focal point of the argument and layer in your convincing points on capabilities alongside the other benefits.

Adoption is a challenge to you personally – as a Herbivore it is is still important to keep your teeth sharp.

While it’s easy to sit back and enjoy the Carnivores and Omnivores on your team bringing success and tackling the technology challenges you don’t want to concern yourself with, it’s always key to keep yourself as well oriented as possible to enable their success with your experience.

There are few things more valuable than a Herbivore who is conscious of technology, and while they may not be the driving force of new tech adoption in the organisation, they can have an educated discussion and debate with anyone along the way on certain merits and aspects of various solutions and why they are being considered vs. others.

If you are a Herbivore, don’t worry about a lack of risk taking or knowledge of tech (this may not even be the case as the general Herbivore mindset is the first layer only and there are tech-savvy Herbivores among us too), rather focus on how do you continuously challenge yourself to look at a little more tech each day and enable your discussion and understanding with those in your organisation that are passionate about this and will do all the hard work for you….