Implementing Change Part 3

Where should you apply technology?

We have seen the promises of technology be consistently not achieved. We do as much or more work every day. We still deal with too much administrative work, and we have rarely improved our productivity and efficiency. I believe much of this is due to where we are choosing to apply technology.

I have said in the past, I default towards a humanistic point of view which I could summarise by a truism "work is done by people". Based on this, good applications of technology improve engagement and poor applications reduce human interaction in communications and working with critical activities.

Improve core value.

A consistently good application technology is to reduce low value, high repetition work, but how do you define what is high value and low value. The concept I use to help define high and low value work is core value.

Core value is the primary activity or work element that is central to a role, in other words the main reason you engage somebody. Let's use the example of a site engineer, a core value for a site engineer is time spent on the construction site interacting with contracts and reviewing work. This would represent high value activity for a site engineer and so we would want to optimise time towards that activity.

When selecting where to apply technology the target should be to optimise the time allocated to core value activities for each role. Functionally this is typically in the automation of activities that are not core, prioritising those with the highest frequency.

Support decisions, not make decisions

"There are no solutions, only trade-offs" Thomas Sowell.

It is extremely rare that meaningful questions have simple binary yes/no answers. Answering these questions requires balancing competing requirements and targets through negotiation, discussion and intuition. While it may be possible to derive the exact positioning against any metric and pressure, removing the human component in decision making moves us away from finding interesting and novel solutions.

There is definite utiltiy in introducing technology in processing the information needed to make decisions. These can provide useful feedback on how a potential solution measures against all the competing measures.

Simple questions such as those with a yes/no result are generally fine to automate. If your question is more complex than yes/no then I would very strongly recommend review of the criticality of the decision before introducing automation.

Avoid "out of sight, out of mind"

"Out of sight, out of mind" is a common colloquialism in some parts of the world, roughly it points out the tendency to forget about things that we don't interact with for an extended period of time.

When automating work processes through the application of technology we take the interaction out of human hands. This automation can be used to remove tedious work, however this almost invariably results in us forgetting about the work entirely. While this may be of little risk in low value activity it is something that absolutely must be avoided where the information being processed is business critical.

A consistent question I am asked in the current construction industry is "can we use AI to check drawings". In this case my internal response is not "can we?" but "should we". This is based on the idea that the drawings are highly critical to the successful delivery of a project. In this situation automation risks the quality of drawings becoming "out of sight, out of mind", this is not a position that we want to end up in.

When choosing to introduce technology and/or automation you should review the importance and criticality of the information and the type of potential technologies that may be introduced. Where the information is business critical, I would strongly avoid the use of automation.

Avoid removing human to human interaction

Communication is made up of 3 parts, the words, the tone of voice, and body language. Rounded for simplicity the amount of meaning in communications held by each of these 3 pieces are 10% words, 30% tone of voice, and 60% body language. This presents a challenge as technology trends towards only words in communications, this presents an issue as communication skills are learned.

The issue with heavy use of technology over human-to-human interaction (i.e. talking) is that we reduce the meaning and value of communication. A face-to-face conversation is 100% communication (words, tone, body), a phone call is 40% communication (words and tone) and email and messaging is 10% communication (words only). This is why any claims to potential efficiencies and productivity, by systems such as email feel like they are not realised. As the effectiveness of the communication method reduces, the effort to obtain the meaning of communication increases.

There is an approach I like to take when reviewing problems based in communications. I target behaviour first, and after the behaviour is resolved then look at improving the situation with technology. In part 1 I had the example of the request for an AI system to take meeting minutes. Functionally these types of systems are great and can take care of undesirable the un-engaging activity. But here before looking at adding this system I would very strongly advise resolving the underlying problems with the meetings first, then once you have good meeting behaviours and engagement add the automated note taking.

Any introduction or application of technology that reduces or removes human to human interaction automatically reduces the efficiency of communication and thereby work.

How are you applying technology and change?

I believe that at a fundamental level employment is the trading of a person's time for a company's money and that time is the one and only resource each person has that is actually finite. I take it as a duty of care that we don't waste that time with frivolous and unengaging work. Each person should feel that their time at work was well spent on meaningful activity. The outcome of engaged people performing meaningful activities is highly productive work.

Due to this framing device and defined target outcome, I have the principles laid out in these 3 articles; 1. Know what you are trying to achieve. 2. Identify your driver for change, and as detailed above 3. Apply technology in the right ways.