The $40 billion mistake?

All of us are making a big mistake in the way we solve problems these days.

We’re in an age of rapidly advancing technology, and we assume that technology is the answer to all our problems.

But we’re not doing the legwork.

It’s as if we’re excited about getting to our beach vacation. But rather than looking at a map, we take the first right turn, assuming it’s a shortcut.

Hours later, we end up “somewhere” and wonder how we got there.

A silly recent personal example-

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a cute LinkedIn post about how good talent decisions are about strategy rather than best practices. I used the hot topic, “4-day workweek”, to make my point. 

My problem? ➡️I needed a cool image to go with my post to capture attention.

Presumed solution? ➡️ChatGPT.

I have zero artistic ability, so this seemed like a brilliant idea.

I made two attempts that proved me wrong.

Attempt 1:

My prompt ⬇️

Create an image of a calendar highlighting four days of work, with the fifth day marked as a rest or leisure day.

ChatGPT’s image⬇️

Well, that didn’t work, let’s try again.

Attempt 2:

My prompt ⬇️

Create an infographic-style image with key benefits of a 4-day work week, such as increased productivity, better work-life balance, and employee satisfaction.

ChatGPT’s image ⬇️

Hilarious!

Garbage In, Garbage Out, right?

I ended up spending a lot of time on this, when I could’ve quickly downloaded a free image in minutes.

We’re making this same mistake all the time in our personal lives.

We need to better manage our time, so we download a time management app. Need to sleep better? Obviously, we need a sleep app. Can’t balance our checkbook? We need Quicken. Lonely? Download Facebook.

Except these technology solutions, even if they’re great, don’t solve our problems.

We’re also making this mistake in organizations.

We’ve spent billions on Salesforce to solve a myriad of sales challenges.

How much do we spend on Workday, SAP, Cornerstone, etc. to solve talent and HR problems?

Over $40 billion per year, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Workday, alone, just cracked the Fortune 500 with over $7 billion in annual revenues.

Of course, these technologies have their place.

They’re good tools despite their challenges.

But when I talk to HR and Talent Management leaders who’ve adopted these technologies, I often hear that the implementation was brutal–expensive, all-consuming, and draining. Afterwards, many scratch their heads and wonder if it was worth it.

The same problems seem to exist after implementation, plus a couple dozen more.

So where are we going wrong?

New technologies can be shiny objects that distract us from fully considering problems and solutions.

When we’re struggling to address talent and HR problems, new technology might be part of the solution.

We should also ask questions such as:

1. Are we offering the right services to address the challenges we’re facing?

2. How effective and efficient are our processes?

3. Do we have the right talent with the right expertise, skills, and motivation to address our problems?

Even the best technology won’t help us much if our processes are broken and we have poor talent.

Like most people, I’m fascinated with new technology. I love playing with AI, dreaming about self-driving cars, and learning about advancing business technologies.

Technology has the potential to change the game for us.

But we need to guard against being so myopically focused on new technology that we forget to actually solve our problems.

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