Something similar has happened in many fields. There used to be typing pools & presentation design teams. Now there is Word & Powerpoint. Many organisations are replacing experienced travel agents with online self-service tools. And with email & blogs, everyone is a communications professional.
Now this is a terrible threat for people like me. And a wonderful opportunity.
As the Powerpoint example indicates, just giving people the tools of skilled expert does not make them into an expert. However, most of the time, the results are "good enough" to justify the cost savings. And if the results aren't "good enough" - well, phone that designer mate of yours and find a way of smuggling his costs through on your Amex.
Increasingly, being a professional will be less about doing the work yourself (although that should never go away) and more about showing amateurs how to do it good themselves. In effect, we all have to become teachers. And this involves two things:
- Equipping them with the skills to use the tools they have to achieve the basic objectives they want.
- Ensuring their realise their limits and come to you for the complicated stuff - e.g. finding a local Mexican restaurant is not the same kind of information challenge as conducting patent application due diligence.
Posts
5 comments:
We're taking this approach with our GIS strategy at work. Providing an intranet based GIS system for self-service; and providing GIS specialists in each office to do the more advanced work (and to train people on the intranet GIS). I really agree with the point about needing to help people understand the limitations.
However we're finding its an enourmous amount of work to help people understand enough about GIS - concepts, data, processes, the specific tools - to enable them to effectively use the intranet tool. Its hard (in this case) to get to "good enough". I'm actually not sure we've got the balance right, maybe we need more experts.
Andrew - I think getting people "good enough" can be a major issue. Self-service travel booking is another thing that is surprisingly tricky. Of course, as we are often poor at measuring actual worker productivity, the hours & dollars wasted in wrestling self-service tools aren't counted.
So some of the issues that affect how easy it is make something self-service include:
- How simple the tool is.
- How familiar users are with the concepts underlying the tool.
- How often they use it.
Are their non-experts that seem to get GIS & have the opportunity to use the tool regularly? Is it possible to make the tool simpler or will that negate its value?
All three of your points are important. And all represent significant challenges in this case.
Our current strategy is two fold... work very closely with a few people who get it and want it and could be good role models for others... and tailor the system further for their needs. This last step may well be making it more complex in some ways but more valuable at the same time (assuming its used).
My worry is at the other end; that the experts just get to do the difficult bits. This is fine in terms of job satisfaction but
a) the business model may not work
b) how do we grow more experts?
Brian - interesting points.
What do you mean by "the business model may not work"?
As for: "how do we grow more experts?"
I think this is a real issue in many areas. And we need to think about reinventing apprenticing as an approach. We also need to look at career paths from amateurs to experts.
What do you suggest?
Post a Comment