January 20, 2008

Learning from Tech: Why Online Mapping Is Not to Blame for My Dead End Driving Experience

This past Saturday I was taking my children to get some new glasses. I found a local optician / eye glass retailer online, that participated in my insurance company's plan and off we went. I had the online directions printed out as I followed along. (No I don't have a Tom Tom or some other GPS car navigation system - yet).

Well about 20 minutes later, we made the final turn and saw a yellow sign reading "dead end". With a sigh of frustration I called the eye glass retailer and realized the directions I followed were wrong and in fact the retailer was in a mall near my home. I new quite well how to get there with out the directions I had.

My son said, "Dad, I'll never use these online directions". But guess what? It was not the directions that were at fault. It was me, I made two mistakes that you should not make when considering technology for your business.

The first mistake was that I did not verify the directions and ensure they were right. The second mistake I did not verify the appointment with the eye glass retailer - it so happens our name was not on the calendar that day.

How does this apply to your business?

Technology is only a tool, albeit a powerful tool, that you use to aid your day-to-day (and long term) operations. If technology goes wrong or does not work the first time, don't blame the technology - it has no feelings, no brain, no soul no emotion. You can only blame yourself.

• Did you get professional advice?
• Did you check references?
• Did you test, before fully implementing a solution?
• Did you ask a lot of questions?

So before taking the attitude that technology is to blame for your problems, take a look in the mirror and see if you might not be using the tool quite right.

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