I have a presentation on this topic coming up, which I’ll eventually post pending client approval.
The number one issue I see when I go into my new clients for the first time, is that their focus in invariably in the wrong place. What do I mean by that?
Let’s take a simplistic example like a business wanting to build a new website. Is a website important? Well, sure, it is the representation of your company online after all. But is it worth the time and effort given to it from the highest levels of the company? Generally the answer to that is no. So why is so much senior focus provided to it? A lot of reasons, but in general it’s because it’s simply more interesting. It’s a very visible, very public creation of something from the ground up. Both from a political perspective as well as a personal perspective it’s the kind of thing a lot of people want to put their stamp on. And oh yeah, it’s “cool”.
So what’s the problem with that you ask? Well, for starters it’s an unnecessary waste of senior company resources. But even more important is that those same resources *should* be focused on the areas in which their company offers differentiated value. If I’m a medical practice for example, is my website important? Yes. So is your IT infrastructure, so is your air conditioning system, and so is your cleaning service. But those things rarely are the true value you bring to your customer. Instead it might be your personnel giving those patients a better experience than they get elsewhere, it might be little touches in your office to try and make an unexpected long wait time more bearable, it might be your bedside manner, perhaps it’s that personalized handwritten thank you note you sent to some patients that week. I speak frequently on the topic of innovation. But I think many businesses hear the word innovation and immediately associate it with technology. No! Those differentiators I just mentioned are areas of innovation and they involved absolutely zero technology.
Those are differentiators. Those are true value adds. Focus on those, spend your meetings discussing new ways of improving your services. The other stuff, while important, is important to *support* those activities. If the website isn’t a true value add then state your desires and preferences to the web builders, hand the project off, and go focus on differentiating your business. Yes, I’m a technology strategist but that means I need to know as much about when *not* to apply technology. Too often I see my clients starting with technology ideas simply because it’s easy, it’s sexy, or their buddy Joe up the street just did something. And this is not restricted to the discussion of technology, perhaps it’s a marketing brochure or a video for example.
And for the record, I’m not knocking the usefulness of websites. Sometimes they can *be* the “true value add” in and of themselves. It was just an easy target to pick on since most businesses can relate to the activity of building a website, and most likely relate to the fact that they got way too intimately involved with its development instead of focusing their time in areas where it would have been better spent. The truth is that there are generally only two approaches to the application of technology in a business. You’re either looking for ways to be more efficient, or ways to grow sales. Some of you may disagree, but my belief is that you can only do one of these two activities effectively at a time. A lot of that has to do with psychology. The mindset of someone in “growth” mode vs. that of “efficiency” is incredibly different, and I have yet to find someone who can pull off both at the same time. Inevitably the split in focus makes you less effective in either area than you could have been. Due to cyclical markets, competitive opportunities, or simply desire, if you want to grow and you have the opportunity to do so then to spend anything less than 100% of your free time focused on that seems idiotic to me. Focus on increasing your margins through efficiency tomorrow. You can do that anytime. When growth stalls, the market turns on you, or you simply don’t want to grow then we’ll talk about efficiencies.
As a side note, it’s important to state that we in the technology industry are also partially to blame for this. How many web firms do you know who pitch a website as anything less than “the most important thing you can do for your business”? How many systems guys downplay the importance of the servers, the network, backups, etc. This stuff is all critical. But my approach with clients is that if they are having to think about this stuff then I’m not doing my job. I want them out there doing whatever it is that makes them money. Let my folks (or your internal people) worry about whether your infrastructure is solid, whether you’re protected, whether the website design is awesome, whether you’re leveraging technology the best you can. If you can get your focus on those areas that bring differentiated value to your business, it becomes much easier to let go of the control in those other areas.
Matt Ridings – @techguerilla