The abundant and crowded marketplace of tools & technology
We Shape Our Tools, and Thereafter Our Tools Shape Us. Marshall McLuhan has been credited with this brilliant adage, but it is not confirmed anywhere. The point is — Tools and Technology have immense leverage
it's like the exponential leverage of a computer over a typewriter/ calculator. The same goes for the smartphone, where the world is in your pocket. Technology is Science put into practice and becomes a tool/appliance/ application when it is part of our life.
At work, tools/applications can be broadly classified into 3
a. Clean slate tools: Open books with hardly any limitations. You need to shape it & keep iterating on it. A community helps it grow. The most powerful ‘clean-slate’ tool is MSExcel. Another one we found was Notion
b. Ecosystem tools: Complex set of tools with their own specific rules, process flows, and applications. Classic examples are ERP, HCM, or CRM systems. These tools create their own world, helps you manage multiple actions though it limits your creative freedom.
c. Standalone tools: Like canva or a zoom, these are for specific purposes. Even there are tools within an ecosystem which can be standalone like Whatsapp in the FB ecosystem or google duo in the google universe
It’s a fact — we all are using more apps/tools. A 2018 study mentions that a company uses 129 apps on average. The top 10% uses 200 apps. This has many implications.
a. More tools create more data: We have not got our head around managing so much data generated from so many sources. Robots can assimilate data in the ways we want. However, the most critical skill in Industry 4. will be to make sense of the data in its context.
b. Tool Flight club: Tools can clash /don’t talk to each other. It can create its own pile of legacy processes, which will be tough to maneuver. You would have seen situations where data is spread out in diff platforms like slack, WhatsApp, MSword, MSexcel, google keep, etc.
c. Security: Imagine the security risk if your company has 100 -150 on-premise & cloud applications with different security profiles. These are spread out in servers, laptops, and mobiles, accessed through company wi-fi, mobile data, public wi-fi hotspots
Like your product, customers, markets & financials, your people and technology also need a carefully-crafted plan. It’s a crowded marketplace & choice is tough. But the first step is to understand that the way you choose is different from what it used to be.
People and tools create data that helps you make judgments, and it’s natural to get lost in this data maze. We all have faced this where we are asked for more data when people cannot make that call. So the next thing is to realize that all choices come with consequences.
As the industry evolves fast, our approach & action needs to change. iPhone launched in 2007, Android in 2008 & 4G commercial launch was in 2009. But we needed a pandemic in 2020 to make people connect & work from home, rethink biz travel & redo biz processes at scale
The playground has changed. Business, used to be a marathon, is a cross country race now. You unlock new terrains as you sprint. You need partners, velocity, short-interval goals & rest periods. Moreover, different terrains need different approaches, tools & talent
Naval Ravikanth mentioned the disease of abundance. Today, business is in a crowded & abundant world of tools & technology. It’s crucial to always refer to the ‘why’ part of the business before making choices. Your purpose is gonna shape how you work, how you behave & how to deliver
So, as peoplsense, we would like to add our version of the opening statement
“We Shape Our Choices, and Thereafter Our Choices Shape Us’
If anyone had already said this, we are just reiterating the same
