Boring is a feature
Something I’ve noticed a lot: people who really love technology are often the ones making the worst decisions about it.
The problem with being passionate about tech is that you’ll often want the newest and shiniest versions of everything. But, in a business environment, that’s not really a great strategy.
Being an early adopter at home isn’t the same as being one at work. If your smart lightbulb stops working after an update, you put the old one back in (or live in the dark for a while) and life goes on. If your team’s cutting-edge “AI-powered” project management tool starts rescheduling everything after an automated upgrade to the latest version, you’ve got a bigger problem.
I spend a surprising amount of time holding people back from the bleeding edge. If your current software works and does what you need it to, there’s no reason to be tempted by the shiny new thing.
“Working” is an underrated quality in business software.
When a new technology shows up, the hype machine gets jumpstarted and, suddenly, everyone feels like they’ll fall behind if they don’t rush to adopt it.
That’s the pressure of marketing, not of need.
Generative AI is the current example. I’m not saying you should completely ignore it. I’d actually encourage you to keep an eye on it, maybe experiment with it, figure out what it can and can’t actually do… Take your time.
There’s one hell of a gap between staying informed and restructuring your whole workflow around something that’s only a few years old, haemorrhaging money all over the place, and changing all the time.
The companies building these technologies haven’t even figured out their own business models, you shouldn’t be trying to figure yours out before they have.
For the most part, boring is better. It keeps running until there’s a genuine reason to change. FOMO isn’t one.
Colin