We have been hearing a long time that using tech to build a competitive advantage is more critical than ever. I think it’s time to challenge ourselves to take this idea a good bit further. We are way past adopting the internet for sales, marketing and business processes. We are past that killer mobile app that your team just had to have a few years ago. The time has arrived to build, own, deploy and scale your own technology.
This may sound like more of what you have been hearing for a long time but it is not. This is not about using technology in your business or buying the latest software subscription that your team is just sure will solve that sales problem they have been facing. This is about building a technology business within, around, under or in front of your existing business.
Why? In a word AI. We have never had such an opportunity to scale our “attention” capacity like we can now. So many challenges that we have not been able to address in the past because we “didn’t have enough people” or “there is no way I could pay a person to do that all day” now are clearly in reach a way we never thought possible.
Think about running a chain of C-Stores across a city, a state, or a country. Are we fully stocked with the latest must have snack? Is there a line at the register? Are my customers happy or frustrated? Are my gas customers coming inside to buy some food or snacks? Is snow or rain being tracked inside creating a slip and fall liability? If you only had your best manager working 24/7 in every store this would all be easy.
Well, now you can train an unlimited number of experts in every possible category of retailing and operations. You can create as many “managers” as you like. They work 24/7/365, they don’t get sick, don’t need vacation, and don’t ask for a raise. No task is too mundane and no attention to detail is too small to manage if it makes a difference in your cost, your margin, your customers satisfaction or your employee’s success.
Why Now? We have been on a steeply declining cost and complexity curve for the past 60 years since IBM introduced the System/360 in 1964 and separated software from hardware. From Mainframes to PC’s to the Internet and eventually all the way to that super computer in your pocket. As consumers and businesses we have been steadily heading down the curve to cheaper and easier to use technology. Each step along this curve increased the potential productivity available to each of us. What it didn’t do is create more “us”.
We can get a lot done, done faster, often done better, and for the most part done anywhere. It’s been great, and great for business. We can now do most anything from anywhere if we simply pay attention, but there is a reason it’s called “paying” attention. Our attention is expensive, it’s limited, and while we can still get better and faster with more data, more powerful applications, and more connectivity, we are still limited in what we can afford to pay attention too.
The classic answer has been to hire another you, divide and delegate the work, specialize the tasks, scale up the team. That answer still holds. What’s different now is the price of paying attention can approach zero so the scale of “attention” you can afford can be nearly unlimited. Aside from those duties or tasks that require true face to face human interaction, almost everything you can think of to fix or improve if you just had enough time to pay attention, can now be given full undivided attention. It can be scrutinized non-stop, it can be watched, studied, analyzed, monitored and remediated all the time.
Why can’t I just buy the latest tech like I always have? Well, I would start by asking you “what your most important asset”? I am guessing that most of you would say my people, my team. This time the tech is truly becoming part of the team and if you build the best team, you win. To build this new kind of team, you must do it and build it with just as much intensity as you used to find your latest key recruit. There is an army waiting. Build yours now. Keeping up the old way simply isn’t going to work.
