An old timers winning attitude toward IT
I spend a lot of time preaching to IT managers and CIOs about the virtues of being skeptical when it comes to succeeding at technology implementations. So often in our desire to serve clients and give the business what they think they want, we spend (aka waste) a great deal of time and money. Hence, a measured does of skepticism about all things IT—and especially those relating to vendor promises—goes a long way to reducing project failures.
Against this backdrop, it was especially nice to bump into an old industry friend, John K., who recently retired, and with whom I swapped a few stories over drinks. As is the way of “old timers” (at 47 I’m starting to think that’s me) they love to tell stories of the old days. When all they had to work with was an old Commodore 64 or TI model whatever or and IBM XT with 64K of RAM … you know what I mean.
But it wasn’t the tech references that caught my attention in our conversation. It was one sentence said with an unusually bright twinkle in his eye when he told me about the first time he was handed Visicalc (that’s the precursor to Excel for all you newbies).
After getting the program to work he remembered thinking, “This looks cool. Now what can we do with this. How can we use this to improve our business.” Still unjaded by the flood of software products, paradigm shifts, failed projects, and the booms and busts of the tech industry, John enthusiastically asked the question that is the center of our professional lives: How can we use technology to improve our business?
For a brief moment, I was reminded about that unique energy that inspires us to do what we do. That spark of curiosity about the magic of information technology and how it is that little pulses of electricity turn into spreadsheets and budgets and blogs and everything else. And how exciting it can be when we discover a new technology and we are able to see, really see, how its application can make a difference in peoples lives.
So, despite all the challenges we face in our professional endeavors and most importantly despite all the skepticism that is required to be successful implementing information technology, it was wonderful to be reminded of what it is that drives us to do what we do.
