"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three." - Alice KahnI love technology. I especially love database-driven, web-enabled technologies with great interfaces that make important things easier to do. Seriously, I really do.
But, I have become aware recently (or should I say "reminded") of ways in which technology can fail to deliver on its promise.
1. Stop-Drop-and-Roll When Technology Makes Something Simple More Complex
Forget scale. Forget extendability. Sometimes business needs are simple. You need to answer the phone and route calls, for instance. How hard can it be really? Incredibly difficult once you create phone trees, voice prompts, scripts, and queues. Add to that a hold music music track from Hades (a stress-inducing piece of classical music that is
reminiscent of a battle scene from an epic film) and you have a comic combination of making something simple hard. Part of the problem is trying to fit all possible needs into one solution, when in fact a customer-driven approach would call for multiple, smaller solutions.
For example, some websites are packed with information for everyone which makes them hard to navigate, contain too much copy, and lose their purpose (for example see anything that the good folks at Microsoft post), so all technologies are prone to this kind of complexity. In contrast, stands very simple
web page design where the text is a clear call to action, the copy is natural speech, and all of the content fits "above the fold" without making the user scroll to read.
Using the
web page example and applying it to my telephony problem, I wonder if the solution is this. Replace the complicated phone tree with its 50 options (and the hold music that enrages already irritated callers) with a pleasant woman's voice who says "Thanks for calling us. We love to hear from you and want to make sure you talk to the right person who can help you the best. To skip to sales, press 1. To go straight to technical support, press 2. Or just hold and a real live, honest-to-goodness human being can assist you. On our website you will also find a directory of contacts that might help you connect even more quickly. Again, thanks for your business. Please wait a moment while we connect you."
If technology makes something more complex, you should stop it, drop it, and roll with something new. For instance, if your customer base is known and finite and if you have more than 2 options on any phone line, break it up and pass out new numbers. It could be that your business is too complicated for the technology to solve. This leads to my second principle.
2. Don't Pave a Cow Path (or Pave Only Cow Paths that Lead Somewhere)
A colleague of mine once told me a story about how a farmer sold his property to a developer and they decided to build houses along gravel roads laid down where the well-worn paths through the pasture land that the cows had cut over years of grazing. Years later, they paved those gravel roads and although the residents complained, only the old-timers remembered the someone hadn't sat down to design the best layout for the neighborhood, but had instead paved the cow paths.
How often do we do this? Come up with a great technology solution to a problem we don't understand fully, just because the technology solution is in hand or can be envisioned. I am guilty of this more than I like to admit (being generally optimistic about technology and life and having this natural impatience to get on with something already). We start building solutions for things that only work the way they do by accident. Or, we throw out a perfectly good "cow path" solution in favor of a more complicated one.
One of the most successful development projects I was involved with was an internal corporate application. Before writing a single line of code, I lived the
workflow of the application (however painful it was) for several months managing an Excel spreadsheet. During this "alpha" phase, I worked out all the communication flows and templates, the policies of who needed to be copied on what, and started to quantify the benefits of automation. The core
workflow changed quite a bit in those early days and got refined in this manual process, and I was able to articulate requirements for a little application that is still very useful and powerful (and has gone through numerous iterations as new needs and ideas were explored).
This reminds me that one must make careful choices about what gets paved and why. Living in a tent on a cow path for a while, while taking land surveys might be a perfectly reasonable way to "write" requirements.
3. Nothing Replaces an Outside-In View
Companies love to create Inside-Out solutions. You need to know how many product returns you get and why products fail, so you adopt a nifty little service application to manage the transactions. It works great. Unless, a customer wants to see all their transactions and the status of each. Maybe that gets a little tougher. Or unless a sales person wants to see all their transactions and the status of each, across multiple customer accounts, geographies, product lines, or departments. Then the transaction system doesn't quite serve the purpose. Before you rush out an implement a fully-integrated
CRM package (which can be wonderful by the way), remember the problem you are solving and the points above. It could be that the outside-in perspective would tell you to keep the transaction system and implement a report instead. It could be that a fancy, automated report isn't needed, but rather a regularly scheduled phone conference with a key customer to walk them through any open issues and assure them of your attentiveness to their issues. It could be that you have
back office communication or coordination challenges, that once solved through better roles and responsibilities, the issues are minimized and more
manageable.
It is good to keep in mind that most customers don't really care about the efficiencies of your business overall, how the same phone tree helps them and their competitors, or what you are doing to solve problems for everyone. They really want their problems solved. And, it is always easier to solve one issue than ten.
Technology can be a part of that. It can help coordinate information, make dispersed and diverse team act together, and can provide feedback loops in real-time. It can be game changing or tactical, but it is only a part of the whole solution.
I first heard this quote from a minister at a Portland-area church event and thought it was fantastic. It applies in so many situations and is such a good reminder about human nature.
A colleague of mine recently used the word "consolidarity" in a conversation the other day (never minding that it is actually not a word). I thought it was worthy of a submission to Webster's. The definition I proposed when I tweeted about it was the following:
My friend and coach, Julie Naster, posted a great article about the danger of getting facts and interpretation mixed. Things she calls "assertions" are statements of fact, like the weather is 45 degrees. "Assessments" are the judgements we apply to those, for instance "it is cold and dreary" or "it is crisp and refreshing."
I have been doing some consulting work for a non-profit group called Westside Praise, in which I am a part. We just released a CD of original a ccapella praise and worship music, including a song I wrote, and I have been working on some guerilla marketing techniques. It has proven to be a great project in which I can experiment some some new marketing tools that I haven't yet had a chance to use professionally.
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