Meaningful Information
Actionable information is to data access what a Rolex is to 150 grams of gold. There’s no denying the value of the raw material, but it’s a long way from the potential value and quality of experience that could be realized when it’s shaped by a designer.
A well-designed tool is a pleasure to use, even in the most mundane task. Business systems that perform efficiently and gracefully—ones that speak our language, organize data and features just as we need them, seem to anticipate our expectations, and even make us look good—these are the tools that business needs.
The software industry has done a pretty good job at defining what business needs from technology: vast systems providing access to a deep and broad inventory of data; functions and features representing work processes and methods designed for maximum efficiency; and scalability that allows these systems to grow and expand. What business now needs is real and effective human access to all of this capability, for without it we’re not much better off for all of these strengths and innovations.
Real and effective human access will not be achieved through larger budgets for so-called change management and more comprehensive training programs. Business needs less systems training, more immediate and effective user adoption, and authentic excitement from a workforce energized by tools that make these people more effective, more efficient, and more capable of performing at the individual level and in turn at the organizational level. This happens only when the human context of the business process is understood.
Understanding business processes beyond the efficient sequenced access to data and execution of functions is a challenge. Data and functions are handy, tidy components with which to organize a system. Unfortunately, they are too limited a tool set for designing a system. But because systems are defined primarily by business stakeholders (people with an intimate understanding of a business’s behaviors, decisions, and information needs) and technologists (individuals with a deep understanding of how to define behaviors, functions, and data within a computer), there is little opportunity to define what a business needs from a system beyond these elements.
A data array of numbers and letters is a collection of facts about the operation and performance of an organization. How to translate that data into a form that conveys to a group of individuals all of the messages within that data is a question that should be asked well before consideration of any technology platform or computer code. “Decision support” is one of the oldest descriptors of the benefits that business systems offer, and the term precisely illuminates one of the shortcomings of current tools. Human beings need to see and understand the messages in embedded in the data in order to be able to make appropriate responses that advance the organization’s goals.
Every executive in the market for software is seeking better performance—to speed up routine tasks, improve overall processes, manage costs, and to increase margins, revenue, and market share. With comprehensive descriptions of the newest technological capabilities, software vendors draw parallels between these performance needs and the capabilities of their wares. For example, it’s easy to claim that if employees who must keep time-entry records could more easily record when they work and what tasks they perform throughout the day, their employers will save money, increase the accuracy of performance measures, and improve their chances of success. For one UK company, the simple task of time entry became such a painful task for its thousands of employees that the company instituted a policy that time entry be performed at a certain time on a certain day. That way, managers hoped, employees wouldn’t be squeezing the difficult task in between their usual work and perhaps would enter more accurate data.
Like a thousand small pebbles in a thousand shoes of their employees, systems like these slow the workflow at the point where technological capability reaches the desktop and is touched by human users. Rather than setting a goal of fewer stumbling points and more exacting training requirements, business needs an interface to its enterprise system that sparks excitement in its target community of human users—excitement that their work is easier and more enjoyable, that they have become more effective, and that their employer is supplying tools that make them feel like part of a winning team. Training programs that improve individual performance are excellent, but training programs that teach humans how to be productive despite the design flaws of a system are counterproductive. Recognizing the difference leads to success and opportunity.
—Excerpted from Wrench in the System: What’s sabotaging your business software and how you can release the power to innovate by Harold Hambrose (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York). Order your copy of this book.
