Technology can get a little beyond our control, just like rivers flooding in this photo I took this afternoon. I went out to Blacksburg this afternoon for a meeting. My Bluetooth phone worked fine and the GPS system actually found me a shortcut. I thought our rain had stopped, but I went steady out to Blacksburg and back. Interstate 81 southbound was blocked for a couple of miles by a wreck just before the Roanoke River Rest Stop. I exited at the rest stop on my way back and snapped this picture. My guess is that the river will continue to rise into the evening since there was a lot of rain coming down along the watershed of the North Fork of the Roanoke. I posted some other photos of the flooding and wet weather on Flickr at "Wet Spring Photos." The overflowing river is a pretty good metaphor for the way I feel most of the time dealing with all the information and technology that we face in today's society. Yet when the cable modem decides it needs another goat sacrifice, I feel really disconnected. When I was in Blacksburg, I visited with Pat Mathews at webmail.us . We had an interesting conversation about the importance of people working for a company having a regular physical connection with the company. A lot of companies have moved to close down local offices in order to save money. Many employees end up working from their homes. I wonder if this trend has weakened American businesses.
Most executives no matter how good they are in person, have a hard time communicating company philosophy to employees in e-mails or even blogs assuming they are on the leading edge of technology. A group lunch every now and then builds a team, provides a forum to check on people and makes it easier for new people to become part of the company.
Just because we have the technology that allows us to work at home through instant messaging, video conferencing, and inexpensive long distance calling doesn't mean that doing this all of the time is good for business. My personal experience tells me you have more effective employees if they have regular in person contact with management. Even losing ten percent of your employee's mind share because they rarely get that eye to conversation can impact the teamwork in your business. Building a successful business is all about creating a great team of people who do whatever is needed to be successful.
Technology can easily get out of control. I love the line that Dan Gillmor used in a post, "A Buggy Car."
"Once, we rode around in buggies. Now, what we ride around in is buggy."
I had a real battle with my pairing my Bluetooth phone until I learned by trial and error that I had to agree on the phone to the Bluetooth pairing before I buckled my seat belt. There was nothing in the documentation or on web sites by the phone manufacturer or the car company that helped. I had a Linux problem, the software company was no help, a customer forum rescued me. As companies become bigger they tend to pull away from the close connection they have with their customers. I think the biggest mistake a company can make is to think they know better than the customer what the customer needs. The next biggest mistake is to outsource their customer support to a spot on the other side of the world.
Company blogs can have a very important role in keeping the dialog flowing between people who use a product and those who design it. It used to be that getting people to read their manuals was one of the biggest problems in technology. A lot of companies have given up and hardly provide a written manual. It is even hard to keep vital information updated on a web site since the technology is evolving so quickly. I hate to overuse my flooding river, but that really is the way technology is hitting us. The biggest problem now is actually get the right information when you need it.
Companies that evolve and provide ways for customers to find out what they need, when they need it, are going to be the successful ones. When companies fail and the product is still worth the effort, I guess we will have to band together and figure the solutions ourselves.
Of course you need to be careful what you share these days ( another case of technology out of control) as Michelle Malkin details in her article, "The Perils of P2P." This is what she found when doing a little searching.
Among hundreds of tax returns I saw, here are three I downloaded (note: sensitive information has been redacted): 1, 2, 3.
It's not just tax returns. During the past nine months, Rick Wallace, editor of the See What You Share blog, has used P2P to obtain all kinds of confidential government reports, including more than 25 classified military documents.
Don Bodiker's experience is a much-needed reminder for ordinary citizens and military personnel alike who use P2P: Be careful what you share. You never know who's snooping around.
There is lots of wonderful technology around, some of it can be very useful assuming we know what we are doing and that the companies have listened to our needs and delivered products that actually can be configured to work. On the flip side like Michelle Malkin details, not knowing what you are doing can be a real problem. Not knowing what you are doing in the case of a company's employees often happens when they get out of touch with each other and rely too much on technology. It's hard to beat a face to face meeting for getting things done or for understanding the situation quickly.
If you want to get a good impression of the rising water on the Roanoke River, the best thing is to stand on its banks. You can smell the flood waters, feel the rushing breeze on your skin, and hear the noise of the speeding river. I can share a picture of it with you that I took one handed driving across the Route 11 bridge. I can even give you a Google map to the spot, but you still won't be as impressed with the power of the water as I was when I stood on the banks of the river and took this photo on the appropriately named Riverside Drive.
Technology is great enabler, but it can also be an unintended way to lose the power of the individual. Linking exceptionally empowered individuals who are personally engaged in their jobs because of real human contact may well be our only way to compete going forward.
