Golden Oldies Twofer: MAP — Your Silver Bullet and Technology Alone Can’t Save the World
by Miki Saxon
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Way back in 2006 when I wrote “MAP—Your Silver Bullet” the world was a different place. Tech hadn’t yet sold it’s story that it would save the world and human bosses were still the key to performance and productivity.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
MAP—your silver bullet
I’ve got a secret to share. Most managers spend time, energy and money (their company’s and their own) in an effort to grow from manager to leader. They study examples and best practices, read books, attend seminars and classes, take advanced degrees, check out software, turn to the spiritual (if so inclined)—you name it and it’s been tried.
The dream is to find a silver bullet; the reality is various levels of incremental improvement; the payoff is enormous—both tangibly and intangibly.
Now for the secret. You already possess the closest thing to a silver bullet that exists and it’s right in your mind.
That’s right, it’s your MAP and, like a snowflake, it’s totally unique—yours, and yours alone. And the magic that turns the bullet from lead to silver is your ability to consciously choose to change your MAP through your own awareness.
How cool is that? The very thing that frees you to soar and it’s not only yours, but also within your control. Who can ask for anything more?
Never forget! You are the silver bullet!
Fast forward nine years and tech had sold business on the idea that it could do anything and fix everything. When I saw the article by Kentaro Toyama I thought it was time to revisit the subject.
Technology Alone Can’t Save the World
According to Kentaro Toyama, the W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information and self-described “recovering technoholic,” technology isn’t the panacea it’s cracked up to be.
“Technology works best in organizations that are run well to begin with. (…) The technology industry itself has perpetuated the idea that technology will solve the world’s problems. (…) Everyone wants to believe the work they do is good for society. But a lot of people in the industry have drunk a little too much of their own marketing Kool-Aid.”
What is often ignored is that people are a necessary ingredient for the Kool-Aid to actually work.
The tech eco-system forgets a lesson driven home by Bill Gates in the 1995 book The Road Ahead.
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
Aetna Insurance found this out when they first equipped their claims processors with their own terminals connected to the mainframe (before the advent of personal computers).
The effort was considered ground-breaking and was touted as a way to streamline the claims process.
It failed miserably, because the process itself wasn’t redesigned.
In short, claims had multiple steps with approval required at each. Because the process stayed the same, i.e., claims stalled in electronic form when someone in the approval process was on jury duty or out sick just as they did in the paper version.
Once people redesigned the process the desired efficiencies were reaped well beyond expectations.
Technology is a tool, not a silver bullet; the only real silver bullets are found within the human mind.
Ultimately the right thing is for us to find the optimal use of technology — not to eliminate it, but also not to assume that it can replace human skills.
Flickr image credit: Jason Rogers
