In the last post I took up Eli Goldratt’s contention that most of us are focussed on efficiency (doing what we are currently doing but doing it better) because that is what we feel we have most control over. I asked what was missing. But another way of looking at this problem is not at what is missing – but at what should be! Policies or practices that we have hung onto that are no longer serving us well in the new environment we are trying to instigate. Let’s again turn to Goldratt who argues that
“Technology can be beneficial if, and only if, it diminishes a limitation.”
This may be a limitation that we are so used to we take it as the way that life is. For example 200 years ago, travel was so slow that it was not feasible to work a full day AND also travel ten miles. This meant that if you got a job in another town you moved to that town. Today many travel much further. Workers 200 years ago would likely not have seen travel time as a constraint, it was ‘just the way that life is’. The iPhone and the Ipad were great innovations but many of us were not consciously aware of the limitations they diminished – until we got them!
The importance of limitations is that humans are intelligent. When we have a limitation we develop work arounds, rules that help us manage. But if we do not change the rules (e.g. our work practices, our policies, our regulations) we cannot get the full benefits of the innovation.
Which leads him to ask 4 questions that might be useful for you.
- What is the power of the new technology or innovation?
- What limitation does it help alleviate?
- What is the cost of the work around rule for that limitation?
- What is the new rule? and its cost?
These questions are not easily answered, especially the last one, but the more I look at them, the more critical they seem to be.
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