Somehow we always end up talking about technology. That could because we work with the stuff, yet technology is built by people, to be used by people for the benefit of people. So all of our conversations should really come back to people. But somehow we always end up talking about tech.
We’re up in Edinburgh talking to one of our lead vendors about our office productivity suite, Bob, Lee, Steve and I. It shouldn’t take you too long to work out who it is. We want to go from product A to product B yet it should be much more than that.
We want the migration to be an opportunity to change the culture of the organisation in which we work. This is paradoxical, a Catch 22, in that we will never break that cycle as long as technical people are sitting down trying to second guess the wider business benefits. Those in the business should be screaming at us to say ‘we’re in the twenty first century so why can’t we do that’ or ‘I can do this at home but not at work,’ yet the screams are just gentle mutterings.
The ICT service has a duality of roles, to provide what is needed to run the business and to stretch the horizon of opportunity. I am back in my bimodal and tri-modal conversation again. It may be that this duality will ebb and flow. The rapid change of technology may mean that opportunity is always ahead of expectation and an absorption lag is built into the system.
We will know that we have changed the culture when it is our customers that are sitting here instead. This may be a Nirvana that we will never arrive at yet we need to keep trying.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 