It’s the 21st century, people. We need to get with the program and there are some new rules to learn

I heard an interesting debate on the radio the other day. Two academics were arguing about the impact that the information age has had on us and the way we do business. One academic said it has been bad for us and (you guessed it) the other argued the opposite

The information age is bad for us – the case for the prosecution

The academic who argued that the information age had been, on the whole, bad for us, had a good reason for saying it. He stated that in the past, when we had to spend a week painstakingly researching something, we valued what that research eventually yielded. It would have constituted a significant investment for us and, because of that, we’d want to extract as much value from the result as we could. He argued that the fact that we can find out in 5 minutes what it used to take us a week to uncover, causes us to undervalue the outcome and we often don’t bother to learn from it, or even process it properly. This is certainly something I can identify with and, to a degree, recognize in myself. But, as always, there’s a flip side, and here it is ….

The information age is bad for us – the case for the defense

Old business rules no longer apply. Things move more quickly, things are more transient, life-cycles of products and of trends are shorter. “Right first time” is dead. We haven’t got time to get it right first time. By the time we’ve got it right, the opportunity has passed. This, in turn, has two implications;

1. We need to be quick, agile and, (as a result);
2. The risk of defects and failures will increase

That gives us a problem because failures, we are taught, are bad…

Hang on, that’s not quite true is it? Expensive failures are bad. But if we can find a way to fail fast and fail cheap…

For me, this argument had particular resonance. I set Capable People up a couple of years ago from scratch. Capable People is, by definition, a 21st century company. Plus it started up in a global recession. The funny thing is, I feel incredibly privileged to have benefited from this unrequested piece of good fortune. I have never been burdened with 20th Century legacies, and our processes have needed to be mean and keen from the start. Now I won’t kid you, some of our success has been down to luck, some to good friends and some to good advice, but (to blow my own trumpet just for a second) I have, from the start, never been afraid of a trail and error approach, provided the company can dump bad ideas quickly and without too much embarrassment. Its also nice to feel just a little bit cool

Anyway, for those of you looking for some new rules, I hope this is a new one worth thinking about. Here’s an article on the subject I found in Business Week on the same subject

Shaun