Technology or People

TECHNOLOGY OR PEOPLE

Which way forwards?

 

Though we confess and believe that people are our most important resource, many organizations today are dumping their people for technology. This behavior suggests, at least for the moment, that technology is more valuable. Corporate reliance has shifted from people to technology. This successful coup d'état by technology has swung the corporate pendulum off centre in favor of technology. Technology itself is poised for an outright victory in its dealing with human beings. On the surface technology makes great business sense except for a few thorny issues that are beginning to rear their heads. If technology is unable to manage these issues, the takeover of information technology in business may turn out to be short lived.

 

CREATIVITY

The switch from people to machines suggests that the human brain can be made redundant and that a superior product is now available in the market in the name of a computer. We know that the brain made the computer. How is it that roles are now reversed? The first rule of computing is "garbage in – garbage out". Computers don't think, they process. Human beings retain, maintain and develop creativity. It is quite possible to feed a human being with garbage, sit back and watch in amazement as they actually make sense of it.  Locking human creativity into machinery even high technology like computers is to stifle creativity. Design, sensitivity and sense will be strictly limited to the process. Relying on technology alone is a vain hope. Technology limits expression and innovation. In many cases, it produces rather dull and routine work environments. Humans don't survive long in such environments. Humans want to explore, to share ideas and to be "human".  If you want to be creative –switch off your computer.

 

HIDDEN COST

A bubble that is yet to burst for many people is the belief that technology is cheap. Computers are the most capital centered expense of any organization. You can hire a person and keep him current by periodic training without too much cost. Software or machines cannot be trained. Technology must be upgraded. In simple language that means that the machine becomes obsolete. A machine has limited development capacity. it is a static investment. If we are talking about computers or software, these may need replacing completely every year and at the very latest 2 years. An organization saddled with outdated technology has to plan for service disruption. This is bad news for the business and great news for the manufacturers. What was saved by dumping the people is easily consumed by technology in a very short time.

 

TRAINING

There has been a strange twist in corporate training. There is a lot of staff training going on in organizations, but it is not growing or developing peoples potential. It is training people to use machines. Training no longer increases the capacity of a business, it only allows it to use its technological capability. Training no longer develops the knowledge skills and attitudes of the people. The people don't need to be effective, they only need to be as efficient as their machines. Corporate potential never grows, it is only redirected every time there is a technology upgrade. New ideas are not required and never see the light of day. Human resources is faced with the awkward challenge of managing machines rather than developing people. If you don't see anything amiss here pleas read the brain section of the second paragraph.

 

STAFFING

The reduction of staff numbers in organizations has created a new set of HR dynamics. The fact that there are fewer people around means we get to see who the people really are and track their performance critically. The emphasis has shifted from quantity to quality. And from skilling to multi-skilling. This sounds good and is good, however, the cost of maintaining and managing high quality small teams is very involving and a single breach in a team can cause a major crisis in operations. We must be careful that we do not require 4 multi-skilled players to play a regular team of 11 players. An injury of one of our players would wreck havoc for us while the other team could play pretty well with 10 men.

 

PRODUCTION

Organizations that hire people to serve machines and not the other way round will limit production to the capacity of the machines and not the capacity of the people. This means that every technological organization is headed for a performance plateau that will eventually lead to a business down turn.

 

CONTROL

The pendulum of control has clearly swung away from centre to technology. Human resources now serve machines. Information technology now marks every human achievement. The people element is missing in action and has been dulled by routine predictability of technological rule. My feeling is that the seemingly successful coup d'état by technology is likely to cause a human revolt and will require a coup d'grace to restore balance in the corporate environment.

 

Allan Bukusi, 2006