As a director of both www.bluesky.co.uk and https://psyphr.com I interact with businesses of all shapes and sizes and business people at every level – from developers to CEO’s, finance directors to marketers. This has led me to develop some thoughts about business in general, how businesses feel about technology and how it helps (and sometimes frustrates) them.
Even now, in 2018, after more than 25 years of the Internet and associated technologies, I often feel technology (and technology service providers) are still seen as an adjunct to or separate from a businesses core aims or indeed their own business.
“We want to do “this”, so what technologies / services do we need to buy in or develop in order to deliver this outcome?” is an example of how this starts off. Even when the outcome is a representation of the business such as a web site, or an application that enables the business to do what it wants to do better, the delivery end is often seen as an outside supplied or managed effort.
This is understandable of course, but from a psychological management perspective the delivery at the front, right there at the sharp end, is as important as it is for the business as the executives or decision making end back in HQ.
If you are running a business or tasked with delivery I think it’s important to expand our perspectives a little and view the edges which our new technological abilities now reach as the front lines of our businesses. As important as the office we work in (if we do) the hires we make and the deliverables our teams commit to.
It’s an obvious thing for me to write but that includes taking extra time to work with those people or companies you hire to deliver or secure your technology. As partners. I feel there is still a sense of web or application hosting being seen as a commodity in some circles when, in fact, without that front working seamlessly with you, your whole business effort can suffer.
I’m pleased that cyber security is now being taken much more seriously than it was, but also in order to ensure you keep or make a competitive advantage I believe that it needs to be fully taken in as a top level responsibility of the board or leading executives. Yes it’s a cost, but we now have businesses in the main that employ less people in smaller spaces as our outliers and front lines are much wider and more virtual.
Working with committed experts long term can give your business the edge and help everyone sleep at night without worrying whether the balloon might suddenly go up.
Working across both Blue Sky & Psyphr