Viewpoints : The Healing Power of High Tech
Just as the Marxist Revolution promised to create a worker’s paradise on earth, the Information Revolution would make organizations more efficient, more effective and more profitable.
In truth, both are failed revolutions based on bankrupt ideologies. The difference is that the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe acknowledged the failure of their revolution. Unfortunately, most organizations remain in the delusional thrall of the Information Revolution promise.
The harsh fact is that America’s companies still spend tens of billions of dollars every year on “information” technologies, with very little to show for it. Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach and other economists offer damning evidence that America’s huge technological investment to boost white-collar productivity has been an abysmal failure.
After poring through Commerce and Labor department statistics, Roach has been unable to find any positive correlation between technology investment--principally computers and telecommunications equipment--and white-collar productivity. Yes, there have been some notable successes. But, on balance, most companies have been extremely disappointed with the returns they’ve gotten on their information technologies.
Why?
You can find the answer in the revolution’s name: Information. Since the first computer whirred into being, management gurus have insisted that managing information is the key to successfully managing the organization.
“Information is a competitive weapon,” they cry, “and we need arsenals of technology to make it even more competitive.” As devoutly as Marxists championed “class struggle,” the information revolutionaries zealously insisted that controlling data meant controlling destiny. So companies set up “management information systems” departments and “data processing” groups. All the technology revolved around information. Hardware, software and network design was optimized around the information ideal.
But, as anyone who’s worked for a living knows, organizations don’t run on information. They run on relationships--relationships with customers and suppliers and relationships between peers and colleagues. Yes, information matters; but it’s the quality of relationships that primarily determine how successful companies can be. Unfortunately, most organizations have built technological systems that do a better job of managing information than managing relationships. That’s fine, but why should people be surprised that organizational productivity isn’t skyrocketing? “Information” technology only addresses a small part of the organizational challenge.
Here’s an example of the problem. You are writing a marketing report as part of a team. The traditional office use of computers would have individuals drawing up spreadsheets, retrieving specific pieces of information and printing up the documents--with charts--on a desktop publishing system. Yes, all the information is being processed, but that has nothing to do with how the report is received.
A system designed around relationships management would allow all members of the team to monitor how the documents were being drafted and make suggestions and annotations on the drafts. This isn’t electronic mail. This is an interactive document that’s being created by a team rather than one created by an individual who would circulate a finished draft for comments.
Similarly, an office manager looking at an office layout from an interior designer might feel more comfortable making suggestions and modifications on a dynamic computer screen representation rather than finished paper blueprints. This system invites collaborative interaction.
Indeed, the point of these technologies should be to create intelligent interaction even as they manage useful information. You can’t have one without the other.
Organizations need a different technological revolution, a revolution in which the word “relationship” replaces the word “information.”
This need has slowly begun to be recognized. Instead of being prisoners of their chief information officers, a few companies have begun to rethink the role technology should play in their organizations. A different systems design ethic is emerging. New academic subcultures are springing up to study how technology can be used to structure relationships as well as information. Last month, the third Computer-Supported Cooperative Work conference was held in Los Angeles. This international research community is exploring how computing technology can be reconfigured to address the needs of organizational relationships.
Some of these researchers come from the fields of anthropology and sociology; others come from the worlds of software systems and network design. What they have in common is a recognition that the old information paradigm doesn’t work any more.
Indeed, these people increasingly view computers as a medium to manage relationships instead of a medium to manage data. One clear signal of the new design ethic is that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--perhaps the Parthenon of information technology--has set up a new institute in its management school to study how computing technology shapes relationships. New journals are emerging.
The field is truly global. Researchers from Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, Japan’s giant telecommunications company, and NEC Corp., one of that country’s leading computer firms, presented some of the most interesting demonstrations of how technology can transform collaboration and cooperation in the workplace. For example, they showed a “virtual desktop” that enabled several people to remotely create documents, spreadsheets and ideas on both their own personal computer screens and a central community screen.
Although this field remains on the fringes of management science and computer technology, companies frustrated by the failure of their information technology investments have become more curious about other approaches.
The bottom line is that we will see a new set of questions asked when organizations design and implement their new networks. Instead of just asking, “What’s the critical information that people need and how can we get it to them as quickly and efficiently as possible?,” designers will ask, “What are the key relationships both inside and outside the firm, and how can we use technology to augment them?” Indeed, they’ll also ask, “What are the unsuccessful relationships within the organization and how can we use technology to minimize--or heal--those problems?”
Systems that are designed to support relationships will look and behave differently from systems that are designed and built to support information, just as office buildings designed to be monuments are different from buildings designed to be worked in.
It’s not clear what these new systems will ultimately be like, but it certain that they won’t resemble the information systems monstrosities we work with today. It’s time we start using technology to boost the quality of our relationships--and not just the quantity of our data.
