There seems to be a built in negative filter for most people when it comes to the concept of humans being dependent, or “addicted” to technology.  They assume that anytime people are unnaturally attached to a device, there must be a form of psychosis involved.  Surely this stems from a deep-seated belief that anything that was not naturally grown inside our body is by definition – artificially augmenting ourselves.  Admittedly this is a slippery slope.  We have deemed using steroids or HGH an unfair advantage in building ones body for athletics.  Yet we are OK with laser eye surgery in order to improve eyesight – in some cases to better than 20/20. Continue reading →

Web 2.0 has ushered in a number of concepts that are going to change society more than we now understand.

I am confident that 100 years from now, we will look at this time in the same way we now think of the 1400’s and the Guttenberg press.   Continue reading →

I sometimes have pictures explode into my mind – metaphorical pictures that tell a story.  I am convinced God made all our brains uniquely with various strengths and weaknesses.  For example, I am horrible at memorizing text.  I can read over a sentence 100 times and you could ask me for the words in an hour and I will not be able to quote them.  I will clearly remember the context and subject, just not the words.  I do however see patterns in the world in amazing ways.  My brain seems to be wired to consume large amounts of data points and then be able to see the critical connections between things.  Which is all to say that the picture I want to paint for you now is important… Continue reading →

I was reading an article the other day and someone posed a question much like the title of this post, and of course it sent my mind off into a catastrophe of ideas.  In the Matrix movies the Internet became an entity with human qualities – for example, it became aware of itself enough to exhibit a will to live, dominate, and control its existence.  Those qualities seem to be what many humans are driven by today.  It really is not that interesting to me to speculate on when, or if, the Internet one day fulfills the prophecy of the Matrix (or the Terminator Series) because I suspect the fact that we know this could be an issue will assure we never let the machines gain complete control over us. Continue reading →

Collaboration is a word that gets used in the business world a lot.  We want people to share their thoughts, ideas, and musings in real time in the hopes that we can achieve accelerated performance or innovation.  Way before technology came along, people collaborated in person, or maybe even slowly through the mail, so this concept is nothing new.  What is fresh are the technology tools the Internet has spawned that help us all collaborate much faster, better and cheaper. Continue reading →

We have quite a cast of characters in the Republican presidential race this time around. Newt Gingrich is especially intriguing to me because he is a historian bytraining. He states that this skill allows him to know how Washington works and that is an advantage for us all if he gets elected. I have given some thought to this because Newt is clearly a smart person with a great command of the past, the facts, and the realities of Washington. The question that comes to mind for me is, as aleader, how much does the skill of looking backwards help a leader? Continue reading →

If you like big thoughts, you might like this blog.  It is about helping our kids avoid a lot of pain.  I like kids, so I am all about helping them avoid pain.

I am busy working on my latest book, Did God Invent the Internet that is all about whether technology will ultimately be good or bad for humanity.  The great thing about writing a book is it forces me to think about the world in a different way. I find myself using the word discretion more lately and slowed down long enough to evaluate why. Continue reading →

If I am not challenging your thinking, I am probably not saying anything too important now am I…

People pay me a lot of money to help them learn to use technology tools in ways that will give them an advantage in the market.  And the truth is I love the work.  I also realize that I am losing patience with a large segment of people I interface with.  The other day someone asked me what I say to people that don’t really believe that social technologies are an important tool.  I said, “I don’t say anything to them because I don’t have time to waste on people that have such little vision.”  I care less and less about trying to convert people into understanding that technology will forever change humanity, and the organizations that serve it.  There is a digital divide in this world and you either value technology as tool, and are willing to invest in it, or you don’t.  I make no value judgment on those that don’t get it, I just don’t have the patience to waste time convincing them of something so patently obvious.  Watch this video for 60 seconds and if you can’t see a bit of the future, quit reading this blog.

For those of you that are digitally converted and understand the power of the tech toolbox, please pick up your game.  I might be more frustrated with people that understand it but make excuses as to why they are not better at leveraging it than the people that are just plain ignorant on the subject.  There is nothing worse than a half converted semi believer who says all the right things, carries an iPhone but is clueless how to really load apps on it that might actually improve their life.  At lunch today a 61 year old CEO told me he would send his kids to one of our bootcamps because he wanted them to learn, but he wasn’t coming because he is too far gone – and he is… because he believes that.  If I hear one more person tell me:

“I don’t have time to learn about this new stuff”

“I can’t keep up with all the change”

“I get it, I just don’t like to use it personally”

I am going to ditch being polite and tell them the truth, “Your a self selected dinosaur.”

Dinosaurs were big and powerful in their day, but the environment changed and they were killed off.  The environment has changed my friends and it is decidedly more technology augmented.  Natural selection will now bump off leaders who think they can get away with being ignorant of technology – be it personal use, or corporate digital plumbing.

By the way, some of the worst examples of this are people I meet that work in the technology industry and cant fight their way out of an iPad or Windows problem to save their life.  You know who you are – admit it, you are a walking Oxymoron – confession is good for your soul.

Do you need technology to be happy?  No.  Do you need technology in order to be a good human being? No.  It is just a tool after all, and you can paint, create music, love people, and connect with others, and think great thoughts without technology.  Of course you can do all of those things even better with technology.

Let me draw an analogy… Can you play golf with an old wood driver, a blade 5 iron, and an old putter?  Sure you can.  Will you score as well as you would with a GPS rangefinder, a full set of the latest clubs, and a mobile app that describes each hole?  Of course not.  Don’t think this applies to you?  Do you use a 3 year old laptop your company supplies that is locked down so tightly you can’t add the apps you would love to run?  Have you moved to an iPad and mobile phone that are synced with your laptop and automatically backed up in the cloud?  Do you have a full suite of applications that help you do just about any task in life?  Have you built a powerful social networking presence?  Do you use the Internet crowd to help you with tasks? Can you search for any piece of information and find it in seconds from any device 24/7?  These things are just the standard price of admission today.

People often tell me that I am too harsh, and that the only reason I am good at technology is I work in the field.  Not true.  The reason I am good is because it is a powerful toolbox and I love the power. I see clearly how the mastery of these tools has allowed me to operate at a level of creativity and efficiency that was not even close to possible in the 80’s and 90’s.  Scott Klososky + Technology = a powerful force.  Scott Klososky on my own is just average in many ways.  Lots of you are choosing to be average because of stupid excuses like “you don’t have time to learn to use new tools.” In other words, you don’t have time to learn to win – so you will just be average.

You could multiply your gifts in the world – if you would just invest the time and energy to learn how technology would augment their delivery.  The choice is yours.  I would love to see you quit wasting the opportunity…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

I often comment that technology is just a tool.  It’s not magic, nor mysterious, it is just a tool.  I do admit that some aspects can be complicated, and if one adds together all the technology we face in life, it can get overwhelming.  However, it is just a tool in the end, but a very powerful tool to be sure.  Those who master it have a distinct advantage over those who do not.  We all choose to what extent we invest time into adding technology skills to our lives – be that social tools, devices, software applications, or operating systems. Continue reading →

OK, here is the final section of the digital plumbing series…  I mentioned that we have been building a model that can be used to grade, and organize how a company does technology from a digital plumbing viewpoint.  We display it graphically as a pyramid so I will start at the top and work down through the layers.  In each layer, we grade the company’s performance in that layer.  The really useful part of this is to have a framework through which you can evaluate how technology is getting applied.

The top of the pyramid is the concept of matching technology to the business needs of an organization.  So how will do the investments in technology support the company in reaching its goals.  This sounds simple but we often have to grade clients low because they invest in what seems like good technology when the truth is they are implementing things that have much less value than other options they leave on the shelf.  This happens because they lack technology strategic planning, and they invest tech dollars based on who screams the loudest, or has the largest budget – not what would benefit the bottom line the most.

The next layer is a series of technology basics that every organization must be able to do well:

• Normalizing data
• Flowing data
• Storing data
• Analyzing data
• Process improvement
• Process automation
• Device quality
• Training

In each case, we can grade the organizations ability to do this list of foundational activities.  Stand back from which software applications you run, and just consider the general performance in these areas.

The next layer is staffing.  What is the level of technology expertise in the organization?  This includes the IT department, and the user base.  We must measure not only ability of the staff to build, implement, and use tech tools, but also the willingness to adopt and pioneer new technologies.  You can invest in technology forever and if people will not use it wisely, you have wasted your money.

Then we move to the layer of technology strategy processes.  What are the methods by which we do IT budgeting, IT strategic thinking, planning, priority setting, etc.? There are a number of processes at this level that dictate whether an organization is efficiently aiming the resources in the right direction at the right time.

The foundational layer of the pyramid is the operational IT processes.  Things like how you make build versus buy decisions, disaster recovery plans, vendor selection rules, implementation processes, IT hiring processes, etc.  A low grade here means you will not be able to execute on your planning in an efficient way.

By grading each of these layers, an organization will get a clear picture as to the overall health of how they do IT.  Everywhere that anything below an “A” is earned, there is room for improvement.  Added together, this is a scorecard that can help the C-suite work with IT people to improve the holistic application of technology.  The result will be stellar digital plumbing that will result in an organization having a clear path to prosperity.  Fail to improve this scorecard, and an organization is in danger of falling on the rocks of irrelevance over time…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com