Did I miss the Disruptive Technology Evolution?

I have a theory for recognizing this sudden transformation that is happening in the technology domains around us. This is just a perspective on the unexpected realization about new emerging capabilities.

Let us introduce ourselves to this concept of “Change Blindness.” – Failure to notice a surprisingly significant change from one moment to the next when our attention is focused/locked on one activity.

We easily miss slow changes because our brain is programmed to focus on critical and drastic changes to keep us safe in the environment. Hence, we miss out on the gradual but significant actions in front of us, even though we are part of the same environment.

In our context, the immediate and crucial tasks can be our KRA’s, KPI’s, and other connected daily actions, which are our success parameters. Sometimes, we do not realize that our customers/stakeholders get unhappy in due course of time even after a successful engagement and efficient service delivery as per contacts. Everything looks green on measurables, but we miss out on noticing the gradual increasing deviations and the impacts on our customers’ perceptions and relationships, which instigates them to feel ignored and take drastic steps.

So the question is how much of our surrounding we are not aware of?

This concept of change blindness is always going to follow us and keep happening more frequently as second nature. The technology, product, service companies, and every other industry in the market has and will face this syndrome periodically. Every industry sector has its priorities, but they cannot lock themselves and ignore the changes around them anymore. This will also save them from the surprise or shock of having overlooked something. The impulse is to broaden the perspective and explore possibilities to establish new grounds. Now is the age of partnership, connections, and integrations in all technology dimensions.

Here are few IT/Non-IT business areas where change blindness gains relevance and might have impacted the levers of Technology, business, and service sectors.

1.     Side blinds On – New & Engineered solutions: We were working hard on improvising traditional solutions that were being used for some time now. Enough modifications have been made to these systems, and now we have almost exhausted possibilities due to technology limitations. We have been working relentlessly on resolving repetitive infrastructure incidents, but we were practically applying the humanly best-known methods to solve the issue. As we were concentrating on gaining accuracy on these solutions…..Various institutions were formulating solutions using deep learning and neural networks to develop connected solutions that can solve issues in any direction and permutations. The components and solutions built and assembled using new/emerging technologies will change and enhance the products. If the organizations are not going to acknowledge the transformations, they will lose the advantage and benefit others.

2.     Hard work Vs. Smart work Vs. Network (Partnership): An immense amount of experience and knowledge was required to accomplish critical tasks. Resource dependency, investment, and availability were pronounced limitations. The focus shifted to resource utilization but was still inclined towards the same fundamental due to inadequate volume and skill. Effort optimization has seen paradigm shifts from hard to smart work in recent times. We might not have explored the possibilities of utilizing the external partnership for people, platforms, and products. As we were programmed to work in a safeguarded environment, We missed using the global forums. We were always looking at the closed organizational groups/teams/forums due to a certain level of confidentiality…which is agreed…but we could also look outwards to seek global insights/opinion by protecting the IP/customer data. Sharing is learning – Start identifying and being part of the available people Network. You can seek help, critiques, and suggestions to improvise a solution/approach. We should start looking out for association with technical & management Academic institutions to involve them in problem-solving sessions and seeking academic perspective (Involving the students to work on a live use case and frame solutions as a project). Building customer advisory forums, where we nominate a representative from each of our customers and seek their views on the answers. Opting for membership of knowledge consortiums and study circles to participate in symposiums and learning sessions will elevate the thought process and fundamentals. It is time to look for new and evolving options that can complement the current operation mode and contribute to the missing people process and platform components using and building “The Networks.” beyond boundaries.

3. Workplace – WorkForce – Work Flow: Barriers are existing between teams and reluctance to come under one roof and work together. This is again directly proportional to the organization’s culture, but this scenario can be expected in general. If we were not so engrossed in safeguarding and protecting information, knowledge, and team data, we should have started talking about deconstructing these silos and look beyond the teams to join hands and build a global workplace for the worldwide workforce. The thought was to develop specialists and experts in that one domain/technology, but the workforce is getting multi-faceted with techno-management proficiency. Onboarding of new technology and knowledge partners could have created a new definition of a workforce (not limited to crowdsourcing) of many dimensions. Traditional workflows were handled by teams and designated resources with a TAT of a few days. These tasks were people dependent, but now RPA (Robotic process automation) has taken over with no human intervention, processing round the clock (no shifts) and drastically reducing errors.  

4.     Investment priorities in emerging technologies: IT Enterprise investment portfolio was biased on front-ending transactional applications. These transactional systems were topping the list for upgrade and transformation as the primary objective was to run the business. Why not …..as this was the business demand and end user’s expectation. With an entire focus on keeping these applications running, the technology groups lost sight of Core systems and linking systems. There was no attention to adoption, migration, and integration of core systems, a living example of change blindness.

Changes were happening at the core systems level, which was directed towards transforming business profitability, availability and extending the experience and convenience quotient to the broad user base. (cloud and digital platforms can be a good illustration for Core ICT systems). These make your future-ready to adapt and scale to new additions and inclusions in the technology sector.

5.     Cost Vs. Value (Perspective & Positioning): The perspective of delivery organizations was inclined towards cost-benefit, improving operational margins, and customer profitability. The end goal was to meet customer and business expectations as designed by our traditional service delivery models. Customers were open to listening, and they are always. We might have missed presenting the positioning and intention for change. Change in perspective from Cost benefit to value proposition that we will incorporate and talk more about the outcome and not output.

However, now that we have entered into a new era, almost all organizations have immediately started positioning their respective initiatives in this direction. Trying desperately to exist and complement one another, Which I will say is an excellent start to a successful journey.

At some point, we are being guided autonomously by technology into the direction that is predetermined by technology leaders. I am not saying that the magnitude of change blindness has defeated us entirely. Still, to be realistic, it has affected and proven right in many situations, which is why we are now trying to bridge the gap between the past and present technology landscape. There is a need to strengthen and define the practice/research team’s role in shaping, directing, and presenting recommendations based on the organization’s nature of the business to pave the way for future transformation. We need these teams to cover us and track industry-wide changes, adoptions, and trends while Operations, delivery, and strategy teams are looking forward. Every second passing by is making the future a past, leaving a narrow window for the present. We will soon be standing at a technology crossroads even before realizing to walk a new path of revolution.

Hence it is time to consider all possibilities, get a 360-degree vision, and with the right advisory choose the right approach. Also, an open mindset to embrace change that is exclusive to the organization’s objective and vision.

Again – When are we going to make the efforts to know about our surroundings – that we are not aware of?