Leveraging Technology Part 3

 

We started by looking at different types of technology and went on to look at the benefits of embracing it alongside the losses we suffer when we don't. In this last segment we take a look at.....

How do you make tech work for you?

As an organization, you need to create a culture that encourages and embraces technology. You also need to adopt elements of technology that work for you. Not every technology out there is meant to find its way to you. The question you must ask and answer is does this tech work for me? If not you must go further down and ask how it can be tweaked to fit in with your needs.

I will quote a service provider in the UK technology sector. it’s not the availability of technology nor the means to pay that’s the problem; it’s many businesses’ failure to plan that trips them up.  There is significant lack of strategy on how to adequately use the technology that is available to us all, which collectively slows us down and wastes a considerable amount of valuable time. (Mikkelsen, 2018)

There is a number of things you can do to inculcate the use of tech in your organization or even personal life. I will share them in no particular order. Among them is incentivizing tech use. If you make scores for tech use a part of appraisal processes, many more people will get on board if not for anything else, just to get good scores. Think about how else you can reward the uptake of tech in your own situation. We as humans are always looking for what we will gain by embracing certain habits and ditching others. The prospect of using technology must be made enticing enough to ensure faster uptake. (Richter &Sinha, 2020)

Invest in the infrastructure. Make it easy for the people to take it up by reducing the struggles involved in embracing it. Make the infrastructure around it supportive and user friendly and you will have it more easily adapted.

Make reskilling and learning part of the plan. You must ensure that you and your staff are well versed in making use of the new tech you are about to introduce or already introduced. This makes it easier for them to adapt. You must also in your training cover aspects like what is in it for them. The benefit must come out clearly to boost the degree of adoption.

Don’t tokenize it. This should be approached from a holistic perspective. You cannot afford to be occasional in your insistence that people adopt tech and run with it. For sustainability, the focus must be consistent.

Have an implementation strategy. When you introduce a new technology in your place of work, the question you need to answer is how will you carry it through to successful adoption? More important than buying the equipment is how you are going to ensure that there is sufficient buy-in from the users of the same. Without a strategy, your new tech investment might be dead on arrival. You cannot use a scatter gun approach and expect to see great results. Your strategy must be clear and easy to follow for the best results.

Communicate that it is a tool. The message from the top across the organization needs to be one that says tech is a tool not a master. Whatever tech you bring in must be seen as a servant to the workers and not the other way round. When your people view tech as a master, the chances of resistance and revolt increase which doesn’t help you get the most out of your investment. 

Advance planning. You best be clear where new tech is needed and why before you spend a single shilling (small business UK.) This will keep you from spending money on new shiny objects that add little to no value for your organization. At best you want to be sure that even your own staff see the benefit of introducing the new tech before you do it.

Another thing to help tech work for you is to evaluate its performance over time. You need to interrogate to find out whether it is making things easier or not. If you don’t like the answers you are getting, then it is critical that you find out why things are not as you envisioned. Whatever you discover should help you decide whether this is something to keep working at or let go. If the issues can be fixed then by all means fix them. If they are beyond fixing, it is best that you cut your losses and move on to the next thing. There is nothing capable of hurting you more than persisting with a piece of technology that is clearly working against you.

Select the right tools. Finding the right fit for you is critical if you will make tech work to your advantage. The wrong tool will make your life miserable. The right tools however will improve the quality of your life and your productivity. Do not buy it simply because someone else got it. Be sure that it can make a real difference in your life before you buy it. This also extends to you choosing tech that addresses your most pressing needs. Think about where you are wasting time the most and what tools you can take up to do things better. (Forbes Technology Council, 2017.)

Keep your tools few. You do not have to use every App out there. Choose the ones that contribute the most to your situation and ditch the rest. I know there are many apps on your smartphone that have not been opened for a whole year. Such should not be clogging your space. They are simply filling up the plate with nothing to show for it. You must become ruthless with your selection of tools to retain only what is relevant. 

 Make your use incremental. Do not go for big, sweeping changes. It is better to introduce little tweaks to your way of doing things. Humans don’t like revolutions, they work better with evolutionary changes. To increase your chances of staying on course, as a business or individual, choose to take small steps forward at a time.

Use it to handle repetitive tasks. Are there aspects of your work that can be automated because they are simply repetitive and monotonous? That is a good place to start in your efforts to use technology. If there is a machine out there that can take care of those tasks, then by all means go out of your way and use them to do it. your life will be easier for it.

Moral considerations. Use tech that aligns with your values. When you realize that certain tools are being used for sinister purposes which end up hurting other people, boycotting their use or protesting against it can go a long way in correcting the wrong. Remember tech must remain a servant to the user and not the other way around. You can also protest by becoming a co-creator of the kind of tech you want out there. This is what has led to the rise of open-source developers and developments for the benefit of all like Ubuntu.

I believe that even though this list is not conclusive, it will go a long way in helping you interact better with tech as a person or a business going forward.

I would also be honored to know your thoughts around this whole issue and how you make tech work for you in your own situation. Let’s share in the comments.