Since the pandemic started, I’ve replaced world travel and honest-to-goodness socialization with video games. I have mostly been playing Sea of Thieves with a friend. It’s the kind of game where you can have some human interaction and drop in and out without committing to it for a multi-hour playtime. I started playing it on my older Xbox One and decided that when they came out, I’d get the new Xbox Series X. (By the way, this is an absolute tragedy of product naming. Honestly, however Microsoft decided to go from Xbox to Xbox 360 to Xbox One, to Xbox One S and Xbox One X, and now to X Box Series S and Xbox Series X should be a case study in bad product naming practices. If anyone from Harvard Business School is reading – I implore you to teach this.) I wanted the Xbox Series X because I wanted the absolute best-of-the-best experience when it came to games. I can’t actually do anything fun during this protracted lockdown, so I may as well be able to run games in 4K at 60 fps. Alas, I have been totally unable to find one in stock anywhere, so I still haven’t gotten one.
This is not my Xbox Series X, because I don’t have one.
Apparently, Microsoft only made 7 - and we all had to fight it out for who would get one of them.
I’ve tried multiple times to get my kids to enjoy some games with me on the Xbox, but it’s mostly been a futile effort. Both my kids have struggled with the controls and don’t seem to be interested in any of the deeper storylines of any of the games I have on the Xbox. Frankly, I think it may be because they don’t like the controller or have the patience for a game with an involved storyline. They prefer to play Minecraft on their iPads and the web games that they have on their Chromebooks that they use for school.
For Christmas this year, my kids got a Nintendo Switch which is a significantly different experience from the Xbox. The controllers are markedly smaller and the games that we have for it may not have the intense graphics that the Xbox can provide, but they’re colorful and engaging especially for short play sessions. We’ve been having a lot of fun as a family playing Mario Kart, Mario Party, and after the kids are in bed I sneak in a little Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Clearly, the graphics in these games aren’t hyper-realistic like Cyberpunk 2077 would be in 4K, but we’re all having a lot of fun playing them.
Just a week or two ago, I was thinking about video games when I recently saw a post on LinkedIn that made the point that Enterprise IT is always years behind the ball. I think it said something like “If Enterprise IT is implementing a technology, what are the real techies doing?” I should have saved the image or link so I could post it here, but honestly it was one of the things I scrolled by without really digesting it and I couldn’t find it again when I wanted to go back to it. I scroll by a lot of things that I wish I could refer back to occasionally, but don’t ever really do so. Is it just me, or does anyone else have this “problem”?
Anyhow, the more I thought about the sentiment that IT is often behind the curve when it comes to technology adoption, the more I wanted to respond because I think it misses the point. The good news for me is that I have this blog, and that means I can write it down instead of just calling each of you personally to express my frustration with such a condescending view. (As a side note: leave your cell in the comments and I’ll call you and read you blog posts from time to time. My mother-in-law loves this service – especially when I call at 5:15 am on a Sunday.)
The thing that frustrates me about this is that it misses the entire point about why we have IT. As I tried to explain in a previous post, the whole point of having IT in an organization at all is to make it better at achieving its mission. In other words, it’s about being more competitive or effective in the marketplace that the organization is operating in. That means that if your company manufactures widgets, IT should help make and sell more widgets or minimally reduce the cost of making them. It also means that if you’re a hospital, the purpose of IT is to help improve patient care, or reduce operating expenses, or maybe make it so I don’t have to sit in the waiting room for 75 minutes past my appointment every. single. time. I’m. there. (Not bitter.) The point is – it should make the organization better at what the organization does. Note that the purpose of IT is not to “run the latest bleeding edge awesomeness.”
Sometimes running the latest whiz-bang thing and your company’s effectiveness converge. As a simple example: if your company is into immersive entertainment, then maybe the latest VR and AR applications are right up your alley. You probably should look into them because it could improve your company’s revenue. However, very often these two things are not aligned. And twenty-five years deep into my IT career, I can say that in my experience it is far more common that they do not align than they do. And not only is that OK, it’s actually a really good thing for your company.
I don’t run your company, but if I did I probably wouldn’t authorize you to build an autonomous transformer.
…despite the fact that I’d really want to approve it.
The problem with many bleeding-edge technologies is that by the very nature of them being nascent is that they are inherently untested and unstable. That’s a really good reason to not jump into anything before you’re absolutely certain it’s stable and wise and will help move your company towards your collective goals. Imagine you’re that widget manufacturer, and you’re in such a rush to implement some AI that is supposed to plan your manufacturing targets based on order history - and the thing ends up having you underproduce by 30%. That’s a big mistake. It’s actually a reason I’ve heard that development in the medical field is so hard – those devices can’t be five nines effective, they have to be far more, so the development time is much longer.
That lack of stability almost always translates into a really high cost. After all, you need to pay people with advanced skill sets to design, implement, and run these new technologies and the people who ride on that latest-and-greatest train generally don’t work cheap. After all, it was hard to get skilled up in the “new stuff” so quickly so they probably do deserve the high price they command. So not only do you have a solution that may be unstable, but you have to pay a fortune to stand it up and keep it running. Maybe sometimes the shiny new thing isn’t as much fun as it seems initially – the ramifications can sometimes take away some of the luster.
Like everything else in business, the decision doesn’t rest solely with stability and cost - it’s about filling a perceived and legitimate business need. If you work for your region’s largest fried chicken restaurant chain, you may not have a very good reason to be deeply invested in robotic process automation. The point is that the IT for these shops should be looking for technologies that are a good fit and solve problems or challenges that the organization is currently having or will be having very soon. This is a key reason why I don’t believe in “IT in a vacuum.” It’s essential that IT be in tune with the business stakeholders as that’s the only way to really know where the needs are, which of course is the only way to ultimately meet them.
Let’s get back to the Nintendo Switch. It may not be the best hardware on the market. After all, even conservatively the thing is two generations behind the latest from Microsoft and Sony - but it fills my family need perfectly. Our family needs games that are fun for a family of four to play together, are accessible by novices like my kids, and people terrible at video games like my wife. We don’t have a need for the latest and greatest device in order to meet our entertainment needs. The Switch absolutely does the job that we want out of a video game system. When you consider that it perfectly fits the bill for $299 and an Xbox Series X is $500 and likely wouldn’t meet our needs as much you can see why this ended up being a great decision.
To reframe the conversation in case you don’t play video games, imagine you bought a house and noticed your tub was leaking and called in a plumber. The plumber comes to your house and offers you a brand-new type of hot water heater that heats water absolutely silently – even if you’re standing right next to it. He also mentions that this has only been installed in a few other houses around the country, is going to cost $10,000 to install, and will probably require a $100 monthly service visit. How likely would you be to buy it? Probably not at all, right? Most people don’t think about the noise their hot water heater makes – it’s not a problem they perceive they have. However, if the plumber offered you a $30 service visit that would fix your leaking tub once and for all with a silicone patch that has been used thousands of times successfully all around the world and almost never required a call back, you’d probably jump at it. You don’t have a problem with your hot water heater; you have a problem with your tub. Just because the plumber thinks it would be fun to install the newfangled hot water heater is not a good reason to buy it because it doesn’t solve a problem you have.
Coincidentally, your CEO probably doesn’t think any differently than you do about things like this.
I’ve got to be honest - this thing totally fits the needs of our family.
We’re loving it, and it’s not even close to the latest thing on the market.
And that’s my whole point about IT – enterprise or otherwise. Yes, it may move a little slower and not have the absolute latest thing that has come out all of the time; but if it’s solving the needs the business has – if it’s really helping to make the organization more effective at whatever it is that the organization does – it’s filling the role that it’s funded to do. Trust me when I say that many IT shops aren’t even meeting this need - so instead of worrying about the latest technology that you could be implementing, be worried whether the next project you’re going to propose actually helps the company. If it doesn’t, consider rethinking it. You may end up making more of a name for yourself by finding a technology that solves a current problem inexpensively and reliably.
In other words, maybe there’s a Nintendo Switch sitting around you can get that everyone will love even if you can’t get your hands on the Xbox Series X.
Questions for reflection:
What is the last technology you’ve really wanted to get your hands on because it was super cool?
Can you think of a situation where an older, cheaper technology solved a problem better than the latest buzzword craze technology?
What problems is your company having right now? Can you see any ways to help solve them with technology?
