The Power of Perception

What Others See Matters

Over the last several weeks, I've been talking about the strategic application of technology: how the timing of tech spending relates to material benefits, what you should expect as a return from your tech spend, and the improvements you should feel from improved speed, accuracy, and reliability.

In sum, what we've been talking about is managing technology spending to yield strategic and competitive advantages.  If you're not proactively managing the technology problem, you're reacting to it - and probably hastily and poorly - and that doesn't inspire confidence in anybody.

Perceptions Matter

Confidence is 360-degrees, baby.

If you're not controlling your IT spending or your spending doesn't line up with strategic outcomes, it's a problem that's visible to you, your employees, your suppliers, and your customers.

What does it say to these stakeholders when your company:

• Makes significantly more mistakes than your competitors?
   
• Is chronically late on assignments, appointments, and deliverables?
   
• Doesn't have the capability and convenience offered by your competitors?
   
• Isn't listening nor responding to consumer complaints, needs, and concerns?
   
• Is significantly more difficult to work with than other business partners because you don't have the automation to make their business processes more streamlined?
   
• You're using email, contact, calendar, and business productivity solutions that knowingly - based on their own terms and conditions - expose your customer's personal private information to spammers and advertisers?
   
• You don't respond when someone in your organization loses a cell phone, a laptop, or is hacked, nor attempt to understand your degree of exposure, risk, or legal obligation when these events occur?
   
• Never thinks twice about installing wireless electronic devices on a business network shared by point of sale stations or credit card swipes?
   
• You're down for a day, two, or three, after a catastrophic systems failure?

The point is that perceptions really do matter. They can say a lot about a company, its products and services, its management team ... It's a signal.

What do you think that message should be saying about your company? 

Managing technology risk is part and parcel of modern business management today. Small business owners wear many hats and can't be expected to know everything about every subject, but that's why they hire CPA's, HR professionals, marketing companies, and web designers. They should also think very carefully and proactively about who they bring on as a trusted IT advisor.

Is it going to be your cousin? An intern? Another 'Geek-Guy' from down the road? Or somebody serious, with real business experience? Well, as they say ... the choice is yours.

Next: What is an Information System.

R

Reduce Your Stress: Tell Your Phone Who's Text is Important

Your cell phone is a relentless master. And it has you trained better than Pavlov's Dog.

When it vibrates, you look at it; it twerps, you look at it; dings, you look at it; even when you're not supposed to be, you're looking at it. We do this with our phones because we've unwittingly created an unhealthy addictive response cycle in our brain, yet none of that constant anxiety really helps us to become more productive or more efficient. In fact, it just fuels a mounting sense of anxiety.

If you're ready to take control of things, and put more investment in the current moment, here's a couple of good suggestions on how to manage text messaging more effectively. These instructions are for an iPhone, but a similar process can likely be followed on any mobile phone system. Okay, ready?

1. Turn off Vibration for Text Messages. On an iPhone, you can do this by accessing Settings > Sounds, and de-selecting both of the vibrate options.

2. Turn off Sound for Text Messages. In the same space, you'll want to put the text tone to None.

3. Enable a Text Tone for Important Contacts. In your Contacts, find a Contact from whom you always need to be alerted when they text you. Think of somebody important in your life - not clients, not just anyone - who you really want to be notified when they text you. 

4. Edit a Contact. Change the Text Tone to a tone of your choice. Leave the Vibration selection off. Save your changes.

Final Thoughts

Okay, you might ask me, why turn off vibration entirely?

• Well, first off, you and others around you can still hear it, even when it vibrates, and it disturbs the moment of Now. That's not useful.
   
• Second, by not disabling it, you train your body to listen by feeling for the vibration, even to a point of creating imaginary false positives where you think you're feeling the vibration of your phone but you really aren't.  That's actually kind of creepy.
   
• Third, vibration drains the cell phone battery faster than playing a tone. So, yeah, it serves a practical purpose. Use less energy. Save the planet. Yadda-yadda.

If your goal is to disassociate the habitual response of checking your cell phone with each and every incoming text message, by telling your cell phone specifically who is important, you can filter out the noise of irrelevant and meaningless messages that pull your mind away from Now. You can check text messages as if they were email messages - on your own time and schedule that works for you - and with substantially less drooling.

R

The Z-Curve: the Timing of Technology Spending

Does IT Spending Matter?

Nicholas Carr is one of the more controversial voices in my industry. Over over a decade, Mr. Carr has provided a contrarian view of IT spending and has even asked if IT spending really matters. His premise being that every technology eventually becomes ubiquitous and   adopted by all, yielding businesses no competitive advantage. Crazy, eh? So his message begs us to ask, does tech spend really matter in the first place? If everyone eventually adopts technology at a ridiculously low cost an earns the same competitive differentiation from it's adoption, why are we interested in spending money on it ourselves?

Timing is Everything

(C) 2004. Nicholas Carr. 

Core to Mr. Carr's observations is understanding where your industry is along the Z-Curve for adopting new technology.  

This is his Z-Curve of Strategic Value. Yes, it looks more like an X-Curve but put that aside for a moment. You'll notice the S-Curve (ubiquity curve) shows that, over time, there is a relatively limited number of early adopters who embrace the technology, but during that early adopting period, they earn the highest potential for competitive advantage because nobody else has it yet. That's the Z-Curve you're seeing there, and the gap is very wide. 

(C) 2004. Nicholas Carr.

Now, over time, as more and more people adopt the technology, the competitive advantage gained from reducing expenses, containing expenses, or generating revenue slides off. You have a smaller range of competitive advantage because more people are applying the technology. Its cost and complexity is coming down, and more and more companies are beginning to install it. Over time, the technology becomes cheap and ubiquitous: everyone can afford it, everybody can have it, and it's now just a common aspect of doing business. What this is telling us that there's a timing involved for investing in technology that's earning first-mover and follower advantages.

What's the Difference and Why Do I Care?

That's a great question and it matters from a strategic standpoint:

• If we're looking to earn the highest rate of return on our technology spending, we would want to make investments early on in the adoption curve for proprietary advantages;
   
• If we're looking to earn a modest rate of return on our technology spending without taking on unnecessary risks associated with first-movers, then we'd be making investments mid-stream in the diminished advantages stage of the curve;
   
• And if we're looking to just stay in the game and be relevant - to have the same technology that everyone else does in our industry and what our consumer expects us to have - then we'd be investing in the weak advantage stage of the curve.

Small business can take advantage of the Z-Curve by innovating with technology: adopting new technologies that are in the proprietary advantages segment of the curve and gain the highest rate of return. They can also plot where the weakest advantage may be earned from the technology dollar should they continue to wait for adoption. This kind of awareness is all about managing IT problems instead of just reacting to them. It's what I help my clients do every day.

R