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You hear it everywhere. We must innovate. We must disrupt! This is the anthem of American business when it comes to technology. The ability to compete has changed dramatically with the continued maturity of certain technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Companies are in a race to figure out the next technical innovation and how to employ them. The trouble spot is can these technologies really do what they say?
Why a Call to Action Now?
The bigger issue is within the company culture, and who is empowered to look and chase solutions for fixing issues and roadblocks. More than likely it is only a few employees in some key positions, and if anybody else has a solution or sees a technology that could make a difference, they either don’t say anything or won’t be heard. The downfall of this is that a few key people only have so much time and resources. The other issue is they are typically tasked with larger, more enterprise-related responsibilities and solutions to hunt for. When you combine these issues with the fact that leaders likely don’t fully understand the jobs of the teams they’re trying to improve, are they even able to focus on the right solutions?
How can ATC Help?
This is definitely where ATC has carved out a niche in helping companies–our ability to assess, design, and implement core technology solutions is how we made our name. But if companies started empowering their employees to be Citizen Innovators and allowed them to present technology solutions, demos, and ideas to solve what they see as everyday issues, would this be a good thing? Sure, your company is looking at automating tasks and driving efficiency, but that isn’t the same as innovating. Companies are rightly obsessed with innovating and finding new revenue streams, but what often gets missed is the day-in and day-out tasks of right now.
In working with numerous fortune 500 companies, what typically comes up with employees in the trenches is the frustration of the internal technology, resulting in the lack of ability to help customers better, quicker, and more completely. Some employees will complain just to complain, others though are trying to have better job satisfaction, so who do you listen to and who do you discount?
What I am talking about is big, really big, so big in fact that most will gloss over it and not take it seriously. Why? Because they don’t believe they would ever get the buy-in to implement it. Thus you run into the same problem of not saying anything and/or not getting anyone to listen, so nothing changes. If you are bold enough to implement this type of thinking in your employees and empower them to find technical innovation to improve the company, you may be surprised at what you get. After all, every company is a technology company in today’s world, so it is about time to start acting like it.
If you need help on what it would take to implement this type of a program or are needing help with your technology roadmap please reach out.
