This week, I am at the Grand Hyatt in New York for the AICPA Women’s Global Leadership Summit. Wanting to be well-rested for the full week ahead, I turned in early my first night. But around 2:30 a.m. my hand hit the control panel and all of the shades in the room started coming up. Talk about being confused. Where am I? What is going on? So after I figured out the issue, I fell back asleep only to hit the control panel again at 3:47 a.m. and have all the lights come on. Too much technology for me! And since things tend to happen for me in threes, sure enough at 4:40 a.m. I hit the shades again.
This aggravating yet funny struggle with all of this technology at my fingertips brought my attention back to the exponential rate at which technology is moving faster than we are adapting. It’s scary to commit to any platform because as soon as you do, you are introduced to the next best thing. This exponential change can cause us to freeze — not taking risks or implementing technology as fast as we should.
Every firm or business today might consider a technology steering committee that continues to evaluate and recommend direction for technology investments. Another opportunity is for us to “Uber” many of the resources we need to leverage technology. What if we start at the client experience and work backward to decide what should be prioritized? Are we looking for ways to work differently with technology or just automating how we are working now?
This seems to be one of our biggest challenges. We must move from doing things differently to doing different things. Technology is the tool that makes it possible to make this leap, but it is only a tool. We need a hand smarter than mine that pushes the right buttons at the right time!
