You’ve bought the best tech money can buy, and you thought that this fancy new piece of software would solve all of your problems, but your people are now having to deal with a broken process and are now drowning in Tool Fatigue.
Why do Decision Makers face Low ROI on Tech Spend?
Often, I see Decision Makers signing contracts to install new Tech because they believe the right software will automatically change the culture or fix their problems. What they are failing to see is all the hidden processes and workarounds their teams are using to get the current work done. Adding more Tech into the mix will only magnify existing problems, and your people will become even more overwhelmed by complexity and revert to more manual work and workarounds. When there isn’t a thorough understanding of the process being used to accomplish the task, not just the on-paper version of the process, you will end up creating more problems than you solve with new software installations.
If you adopt a genba-first approach, going out to see the work happening by the people who do the work, you will learn about the issues firsthand from those who have to deal with the challenges day in and day out. Failing to fully grasp the situation causes Tech Spend to become just as wasteful as buying a house 3x too big for your needs.
If you’d like to learn how to approach Tech Spend in a much smarter way, here’s how to think about it: A tool is only as good as the hand that holds it. So before you buy new Platforms, first gain clarity on your People-Readiness for the new software and what they would need from a new piece of tech to make their lives better, not worse. Often, we think the new shiny widget is what everyone needs to make life better, but most of the time, I have found that we already have what we need; it just needs a little work to make it better.
Instead of forcing a complex new piece of software on the team overnight, try this: Investigate one “silent feature” that already exists in your stack that hasn’t been turned on that can save an hour a day, then look for the next one. Do this until you have exhausted all possibilities with the current stack, then ask yourself if you still in fact need the new tech. This creates “pull” for the technology rather than “push.”
Steve Beauchamp 