Tech in Business: Expectation Vs Reality

not be leveraging tech as much as possible in business with custom-made solutions available throughout the market these days. And frankly, it is difficult to find a business not running the race to be tech-savvy to be less reliant on liabilities at the end of the day. But because it is a disorganized race, and there is no discernible finish line, corporations will dive headfirst into the craziest tech initiatives without doing the research. In the end, if tech becomes a handicap instead of support and augmentation to business goals, it is useless.

Expectation 1: Tech makes you productive quickly

Reality: Productivity tools in tech have played an enormous role in creating synergies where there were none, and this has helped startups exponentially more than corporations. Tools like Asana, Slack, and Trello have allowed teams to collaborate, plan, and communicate a lot more effectively than ever before, however, success hasn’t come as soon as they might have thought. Especially in bigger and in aging teams, introducing these tools have indeed been more destructive, creating more delays, more unhappy employees, and a dip in motivation. For smaller teams that have allowed the tech to rule their routines, however, they’ve adjusted well.

The learning curve does look different for everyone, but if trained at a reasonable pace, and then allowed to ease into it, a team that is positive about changing for the better can be taught to become more productive without major issues.

Expectation 2: Tech will make you independent

Reality: It probably does not. Technology helps to cut down drastically the time spent on different tasks such as business planning, HR, marketing, and you can be taking care of these functions well enough of your own in the short run, but in the long run, you should invest in solutions and specialists to reduce clutter and make more time for core business activities. Dependency on the right specialists is often not a bad thing. Of course, there are a lot of factors which might lead you to a different conclusion, and there is no one size fits all solution in life. Considering what phase the company is in, how finances look, and the size of the company, you have to find the right balance between reducing costs and at the same time investing in solutions and specialists that will save your time and money in the future.

Expectation 3: Tech keeps you connected at all times

Reality: There are way too many connectivity solutions being used by different teams. We’ve talked about productivity tools, staying connected with your team, and communicating to stay aligned on tasks but you often need to collaborate with other teams on joint projects towards bigger goals. And this is where you need to decide what applications to stay active on.

Across teams even within the same organization at times multiple apps are being used to keep track of tasks or to stay in touch, and when those worlds collide, it can get messy. After face-to-face meetings, if the team you’re collaborating with feels ghosted just because you updated them on a platform that they’re not active on, you can be on two completely different planes and there can be a falling out.

It is an ongoing challenge as long as new tech keeps pouring into the market and teams keep trying to migrate to the best one. We’ve encountered such problems too, but at least within the team, we've come to prioritize certain tools that meet the best practices and standards, as well as are compatible with the most used platforms. This solves a major chunk of the problem and all that is left is for teams to get into the habit

Tech is helpful as long as you embrace it, synchronize it seamlessly with existing technologies, and stay in touch with best practices in tech across your industry. It can allow you to overcome limiting factors within the business and collaborate on much larger scales. But without the right attitude, it can become a case of a monkey with a computer. You’re picturing it. Stop picturing it.

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