One of my students asked me if changes to office technology will be what is needed to become more competitive. My answer was no - it will be changes to our culture that will unleash the power of this technology. I used the history of the Royal Navy's interaction with new techology as a metaphor.
Very interesting concept Mary
Have we really adjusted to the electronic age in the way
we work is I think the big question that you are asking?
A huuuge question. I think that the answer is that we
have not. We still work as if we had type writers. Not
just in the use of technology but in our office culture.
The issue is not simply technology and of needing to
change. It is about culture and finding new tactics to
deploy the change. At the heart of this is the question
of leadership. Remember we are in the valley of
equilibrium here and we are so used to paper that we
cannot change unless there is a compelling reason.
It is not enough to demand that a leader do this - how
will a leader do this? What will be the motivation?
I suggest to you that it will be the need to be
competitive with firms such as Dell using technology to
shift the focus of office attention away from an
internal view to head office to an external view to the
customer and the working environment. The US Forces have
also gone a long way here with Marines, Army and
Airforce all able to talk to each other. eBay is the
exemplar - it is all about the customer or in the
Military's perspective - the enemy.
These cultural issues are more imprtant than the
technology itelf. The cultural and tactical issues need
to be the core of your paper.
Let's explore this with an example.
The same was true of the Victorian Navy. Over the 19th
century naval ships acquired the trappings of the new
technology, steel, steam power, bigger guns in turrets
etc but the old doctrine of the Nelson Navy held sway.
hence the new technology could not be delivered to its
potential. Just like the office today. We have all the
new gear but we run our organizations as if we were in
the 1960's For the same reason as the Navy ran itself
like Nelson in the 1890's. Nelson had been so successful
that they thought that this was the way. To think
otherwise was heresy.
The Navy needed two things to make the real change - a
change in culture so that the technical side of the Navy
could have the same status as watch keepers. The office
has a vertical hierarchy which is very slow to make
decisions and which does not allow participation from
the front line. We like the Victorian Navy think that
only executives have the brains to add ideas to the
organization.
Time and complexity are now the key issues. The old
method is very slow. There is too much complexity for
just a few at the top to be able to think their way
through. Those who can use the new technology to speed
up and to improve their ability to see and react will
win
Secondly to see the tactics differently. In the Nelson
Navy your objective was to get as close as possible and
pound away. With Dreadnought's launching a new tactic
was possible that of fighting 10 -15 miles away at the
limits of the horizon. This was a huge change in
mindset. When the Royal Navy pulled off this change in
the shape of the Dreadnought, it meant that every battle
ship in the world was immediately obsolete. Dreadnought
could have taken on the entire German Navy at the time
and sunk it.
This is the opportunity for business. The business that
solves the new tactics will have that kind of advantage
as we are seeing with Dell and eBay. they are simply
destroying their competitors. There is no way that a
traditional firm can compete.
In the traditional office the real focus is on the needs
of the head office and not on the customer. I will say
this again in most organizations the customer is not the
most important person nor the front line - it is the
head office. All the guff about caring for the customer
is an illusion,
Why? Because we capture the value of the firm in the
transaction. If a firm does this then it has by
definition an adversarial relationship with the
customer. To make more money in this model you have to
reduce the costs of the transaction - the result service
levels go down and the customer pays.
In the new model the value is captured in the
relationship. eBay is above all a community - its
community is what gives it strength. Its customers
directly influence how eBay works and support each
other. They are inside the firm not outside.
The big shift will be for those organizations that shift
their focus onto the customer and use the technology to
do that. This then pulls in the participation of the
front line - itself a huge change in culture. More
important it pulls the customer inside as well.
8:36:28 AM 
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