Embracing technology for accelerated growth
Posted by ET Group on January 11, 2018
I recently had the pleasure of speaking at a MacKay CEO Forums breakfast panel discussing embracing technology for accelerated growth. The speech was well received and a number of participants suggested I share some of the insights with a broader audience. This my attempt at doing so. I hope you will enjoy it and find some of the suggestions useful!
Some context. At ET Group, we help our clients weave people, space, and technology in a way that facilitates collaboration and fuels innovation, which I believe are two of the most critical creators of value and growth for any business. As such, we live and breathe different types of social and digital technology innovations and have had lots of learnings along the way.
Music adoption example
To get started, I invite you to answer the following questions:
- Have you ever owned a Sony Walkman?
- What about a CD player?
- What about an iPod?
- Now, do you still use any of these devices?
I bet most of you had or still have some of these devices and most of you do not use them anymore. Why is that?
Next question; Do you have a Spotify, Apple Music, or Google Music account?
Most of you probably answered yes.
Final question; Do you listen to music?
Assuming of course that most of you listen to music, we can deduce the following: most, if not all of us, listen to music, and listening to music is the “job we are trying to get done”. Listening to music stays constant, while the technology we use to “do the job” changes and evolves, and that change and evolution will continue.
I’m sure you would also agree that as good as they are, Spotify, Apple, and Google Music are not the end of the evolution of technology to help us listen to music.
This brings me to my key message: Using technology to accelerate growth for your business is not about focusing on the technology itself. It’s about having clarity on the “job to be done”.
Once you understand the highest value work that you need to complete, you can choose the right technology to help you get that job done faster, better, with greater collaboration, and with better engagement. By doing this, you will truly be using technology to enable accelerated growth for your companies.
As discussed with the music example, technology changes constantly. This constant change comes with a desire to embrace the “new”, to jump in with both feet now, so that we don’t feel left behind. But there can be a cost to being too quick to adopt technology simply based on a bigger, better feature set. We run the risk of being seduced by the allure of something new before we truly understand how it will support us to do the work we need to do.
I’ve experienced this first hand at ET Group, and it’s been a transformational learning experience for me and for my team.
A story about ET Group
I believe very strongly in the power of real time communication to strengthen team dynamics and collaboration. And so, inspired by this belief, we set out to improve real time communication and collaboration at ET Group.
We are a small enough company that has the luxury of experimenting with different technologies to see what works best for us. And “experiment” is exactly what we did.
In trying to improve our communication and collaboration; we installed Polycom hardware in one room and felt like we were off to a great start. Then we paid for a managed service to give us the functionality and quality we needed. This was expensive yet worthwhile. Once those were in place we wanted video at the desktop so we tried a number of platforms (Vidyo, Polycom, Cisco Jabber, Videxio, Microsoft Lync). Everyone now had video at the desktop. But not all platforms could connect with each other and we started to see “islands of technology”.
We had to make a choice, so we mandated Videxio as the single desktop video platform. As with most mandated decisions, it did not satisfy everyone. Instead of increasing collaboration, it was disrupting key business processes and people were getting restless.
After buying additional infrastructure to integrate some of the technologies we continued adopting new tools. Now it was time to try out Slack. Slack was a great platform for asynchronous communication and real time collaboration, but I didn’t get the right buy in or communicated its purpose clearly. Instead, I simply started using it and asking people who worked closely with me to use it as well, believing they’d see the value and embrace it. I thought that I had the perfect solution but the result was not what I wanted. 100% of the company was on the platform but only 20% were using it.
Things didn’t seem to be getting any better until we discovered Cisco Spark. At first, Spark looked like Slack with a smaller feature set. But soon we realized that this platform could potentially replace our phone system and video infrastructure, connect to our rooms, provide asynchronous communication and messaging. In short, it could lots of different “jobs to be done” that we really needed on a daily basis.
We went all in with Cisco Spark, and today we live and breathe with it. It has transformed how we work and how we get things done to fulfill our purpose and bring value to our clients. Through Spark, we can work in a more elegant and effective way.
Although we did eventually find a solution, we got there by taking the long path. A much longer path than we needed to. The most important lesson of the story: If we had started by clearly defining “the job or jobs to be done”, we would have been able to avoid spending so much time, energy, and money on iterative and redundant solutions along the way.
We learned a lot from our journey. And I want to share with you the five biggest things I learned and that I believe are critical for the search and adoption of any new technology:
5 key findings:
Approach with humility
First, approach the process with humility. Listen to different people and perspectives. We all know that listening well is one of the key attributes of great leaders and it’s absolutely critical where technology is concerned. Listening allows us to truly understand “the job to be done” in all areas of the business. As CEOs, we know how value is created, but we may not know exactly how the job is being done.
Choose the right leader
Second, choose the right decision maker. Identify a person who will gather input from all those who will be affected by the change, and have expertise around the matter. This requires humility and the ability to balance priorities from a range of inputs.
Bring in outside expertise
Third, bring in outside expertise when you need it to help surface the jobs that needs to be done. Some organizations are already great at this and if yours is, you’re ahead of the game already but many are not. There are fantastic advisors out there who can help uncover the information you need. Invest in using those advisors.
Clearly share the thinking
Fourth, clearly share the thinking behind technological change and allow people to own their part of the solution. This fosters engagement and buy-in from inception through implementation.
Invest the time
Fifth, and most important: invest the time up front to fully understand the “jobs to be done” before jumping to a solution. I can’t emphasize this enough. By slowing down, you’re able to hone in and identify the high potential technologies that will truly transform your business.
If you take this approach, you’ll be amazed at how smooth the adoption of technology will be. You won’t need to worry about buy-in, because the people using the technology had a voice in the decision making process. And this means that the solution you provide them is one they helped choose and one that will help each of them do the “job they need to do” better. The effect is extraordinary. I’ve experienced it myself, and it now informs every technology advice we provide to our clients.
To restate my key message, embracing technology for accelerated change is not actually about the technology. It’s about understanding the highest value work your internal teams and your customers need to do. Once you have that clear, your path to a solution is easy to chart.
