In the mid-nineties, it was Kyle who was the more tech-savvy of the two of us. Still shell-shocked from my brief foray into coding while I was an engineering student, I stubbornly resisted new technology (with the exception of email, which I loved from the very start). Even the Internet held little interest for me.
Kyle was the early adopter. He had one of the first Pentium computers and couldn’t wait to migrate to Windows 95. While stationed in Panama, he approached his boss to get permission to load browser software on his unit’s computers.
His boss, a surly Lieutenant Colonel who required his secretary to print out each email he received, was skeptical. “Why the hell would we do that?” he demanded. “You’d better not sign us up for an AOL account,” he warned Kyle, betraying his ignorance of technology.
Once Kyle got Mosaic loaded, he decided the unit needed a web page. Knowing his boss would hate the idea, he went straight to the squadron commander instead and got approval. He painstakingly coded in straight HTML while his boss grumbled about how Kyle was wasting time and resources.
Five years later, the tables were turned. I was an IT project manager, scrambling up the learning curve of technology, identifying ways to incorporate it into the business units, and struggling to justify the associated expenses.
Technology, similar to utilities like electricity and plumbing, usually only gets attention when it’s broken. Calculating the ROI of IT expenditures is difficult, and convincing business units to change their processes – even when it’s to their advantage – is excruciating.
I worked with a very large, very successful record label. The CFO was receptive to technology and kept a loose grip on the purse strings. But while many expenditures with questionable ROI were blithely approved, a major technology insertion initiative – with a relatively low cost and potentially huge ROI – was shelved. This project died on the vine because of resistance to technology. The business decided that it would rather continue to accept a significant security risk than institute changes.
At least Kyle’s crusty old boss ended up going along with his idea.
Last month’s Advertising Age interview with Danielle Wiley (also known as Foodmomiac) really pleased me. Of course I loved her comments on the expanding role of social media in PR, and given all the work that I’ve done with her team – both personally and via Parent Bloggers Network – it’s no surprise that I count her among the few who walk the walk where it comes to blogger outreach.
What made the biggest impression on me was her agency’s (Edelman) approach to incorporating new technology at all levels:
“So we have the 22- and 23-year-olds — the digital mavens who’ve grown up doing some of this stuff — serving as reverse mentors to EVPs, SVPs, sitting with them once a week, showing them how to Twitter, how to text-message from their BlackBerry, how to update their Facebook page.”
Reverse mentorship. What Kyle tried to do with his boss in 1996. What we did with varying degrees of success for record label execs in the early years of this decade. Technology is finally becoming not just a valued component, but an essential one, of doing business
It’s social media that’s driving adoption among those who – like me and like Kyle’s boss – once did everything we could to avoid technology. Parents need to learn about text messaging and social networking to stay one step ahead of their kids. Executives need to learn about Twitter and blogging to facilitate and manage customer communications. ROI, while still difficult to quantify, is no longer the obstacle it once was: most social media tools cost little or nothing. And neither age nor seniority are acceptable barriers to entry; knowledge flows from those who have it to those who seek it.
The only question now is how receptive we are.
Technologically-speaking, are you on the leading edge, the bleeding edge, or still in the Stone Age? How about your boss?
At my last job, I definitely had a reputation as “someone who knows about blogging.” And this was at a large media company, in the ONLINE DIVISION.
I’m in the middle, limited by work’s need to follow complex finance rules, but as far as I can be on the edge at work, I am. I am limited personally by budget, and a husband who doesn’t get it. However, after this last weekend, he is getting more supportive. He sees at a minimum, how happy this makes me.
I’m really glad that your husband is gaining an appreciation for your involvement in social media! And I’m really bummed that I didn’t make it to BlogHer and get to meet you. I hope you’ll be in New York next year.
I work in IT, so you’d think I’d be an early adopter. I am on some things, not so much on others. I have a Twitter account but don’t use it. I haven’t bothered with Facebook yet. The primary reason for both of those things is privacy- before I’ll really start using them, I want to think about the privacy impacts and have a sensible plan for how I’ll protect my privacy.
I do have to deal with these things at work, and I have to say- they may be free to use, but that doesn’t really make them free in the corporate environment. We have to spend time thinking about security, potential employment law implications, whether or not the little client someone wants to download is going to conflict with something else we have on their machine, etc. There are some really cool things being done with social media in the sciences, so I try to keep up. But a lot of the people using these things at my company have no clue about the risks, and it is part of my job to help protect the company from the things they might do. That takes a surprising amount of time!
I think my blogging tenure has helped me reconcile my personal privacy concerns. Of course I’m still careful, but for once I feel as if I’m keeping up with technology as it evolves – which I suppose is ironic considering that I’m no longer employed in IT!
As for workplace implications – you bring up excellent points. Working for a record company, almost nothing was locked down at the desktop level. People surfed and downloaded as they pleased, which put a huge strain on the IT department. New support issues constantly arose – for example, iPods (which were also a security concern, given how much pre-release music was loaded on them). We also ran into some legal issues concerning communications, thanks to an FBI investigation of one of the business units.
Ultimately, what I find gratifying is that technology can no longer be ignored or passed off as unimportant. Maybe it can’t be adopted by some organizations as quickly or as fully as others, but it’s no longer the subject of ridicule that it once was.
I’m with Amelia. Not ahead of the curve by any stretch (hence the blog name “Life Behind the Curve”), but I’m at least willing to try new things. I would challenge one point you make, however. You said, “ROI, while still difficult to quantify, is no longer the obstacle it once was: most social media tools cost little or nothing.” That is for the tools needed to participate in social media but to truly engage in it, to be part of a community, it takes time. And, for better or for worse, time is money. One of my challenges, and the challenge of communications professionals working with bloggers and others engaged in social media, is to educate our clients (“bosses”) about why that time is a good investment. Like individuals, some pick up on this faster and more easily than others, but I think that the overwhelming feeling at this year’s BlogHer is that more and more companies are trying to get it right and that is a good thing.
As I wrote about Kyle’s foray into creating a web presence for his military unit, his boss thought it was a waste of time. So yes, while there’s less of an argument with the capital costs than there used to be, there’s still very much a debate as to the usefulness of the technology, especially on the web/social media side.
My boss used to make me come into his office and DELETE HIS EMAILS for him. And he was a henpecker. As in did not know how to type without looking at the keys. Ahhhhhhh, to make six figures and be so clueless. He was a sweetheart though. Good times.
I said E-mailing was NEVER going to work.
I was totally right… not.
I think social media has got to be crack for major businesses. I mean, it’s free advertising aimed directly at their target. Why not get hooked?
LOL – my boss is a luddite. However, in the past year, he’s acquired an iphone, an imac and a kindle (in that order). He does ask me lame questions, and he doesn’t use the mac for much more than typing and surfing the web (sort of). But as far as the office, he’s clueless.
BTW – I love your posts. I save them up because they’re the meat, not the gravy. They require attention, and I appreciate that.