Do You Rush to Technology for Solutions? Here's the Risks If You Always Do

Is anyone else getting tired of the talk – and it is mainly talk – of digital transformation?

The endless rounds of conferences, clubs and lists of so-called digital leaders – all promising a tech utopia.

At a recent event, I observed an audience listlessly staring at their iPhones as a speaker described how digital was changing the world. It certainly has – no-one was paying him the slightest bit of attention.

The problem I have with digital cheerleading is two-fold:

A) The implication that all our problems are ‘solvable’

B) The subsequent rush towards technology – as if digital is the only solution.

Organisations are too often focussing on form rather than function , digitising the prosaic and easily achievable (customer portals anyone?) rather than having a fundamental rethink of why they exist.

As I’ve argued before, transformation is not about the illusion of radical change – but a reshaping of purpose.

All the work we have been doing at Bromford over the past five years has convinced us of three things:

There are problems in communities but there are even more opportunities. We have learned that our customers and communities have many skills. That even if they do need ‘help’ they are just as likely to find what they need from a friend or a neighbour as they are from a ‘professional’.

That many of our most challenging issues fall into the category of Wicked Problems like social isolation, health and income inequality. These aren’t amenable to a single organisation, top down instinct to define, analyse, dissect and process.

The challenge is connecting the various players and closing the gaps. Who is connecting the connectors?

Over the next few months, we will be launching a completely re-engineered way of providing our service – an evolution of the Bromford Deal.

It’s less about Bromford as a single purpose organisation and more of organisation as a platform. Organisation as a super connector.

It’s the result of all the testing , piloting and exploring we’ve been doing over the past few years. The learning from all these pilots has brought us to an overriding conclusion: we can have the most impact with our communities when we truly get to know them and are freed from the shackles of how we used to do things.

Those shackles include silo working, restrictive policies, a reliance on contact centres and customer relationship ‘management’ software. As if customers are there to be ‘managed’ anyway.

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Are we just Luddites? I’d argue not – the principles will be supported by mobile working, collaborative tools and digital networks. However we are resisting putting burdensome technology in the way of relationships.

Digital evangelists too often presume that it will solve all our problems. By doing this we embark on the worst kind of technological solutionism – that risks ignoring the skills, assets and sheer talent that exists in our communities.

Who is connecting the connectors?

Starting now: We are.