A Consultant's View
Prairie Trail Software, Inc. ............................................................. June 2005
The great science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, wrote a series of novels where he coined The Three Laws of Robotics. The first law is that robots may not harm a human, and the second is that robots are to obey. (The third, to protect themselves unless it violates laws one or two, doesn’t matter to our article.)
Asimov’s robots were safe. They did not go beyond what they human masters wanted them to do. Isn’t that what you want employees to be like: safe, do not have, do whatever is told them, etc. The reality is that people are difficult.
Throughout the 60’s and 70’s, American children were taught to be creative, unstructured, unencumbered, and free. The idea was to raise people able to handle a rapidly changing world and make sense out of it; to handle all the new things that had made modern American, modern American.
Education isn’t like that any more. We are seeing more and more standardization, more and more uniforms, more and more state wide tests giving way to national standardized tests.
Businesses are pushing some of these changes so that they can get the right kind of worker – yet, do we really want robots?
Robots focus on doing their given tasks, and they do their tasks quite well. However, they are unable to be creative thinkers – kind of like the stereotypical accountant running a business. This is a well known path to losing a business because accountants get so focused on managing costs that they lose sight of the need for new products.
But, hiring and managing creative people is a lot harder than it is to hire and manage most people.
Most employees need one kind of management style, creative employees need another. Employees who think creatively need more leadership than supervision, honest respect instead of chains of authority, a “longer rope” instead of a short leash, and an acceptance of errors (and they will make errors) instead of zero tolerance.
They do not need to be told how to do everything. Rather, they need to know your dreams, goals, and motivations for what you do and where the company is headed.
Given all the difficulties with managing such people, why would anyone bring creative, critically thinking people into a corporation?
If the corporation is an old, slow changing corporation, don’t try. It will only frustrate both the managers and the new employees. However, if the corporation is to survive in a rapidly changing global environment, then such people are the ones you want.
So, which do you want for your company - Robot like, risk adverse people, or creative, critically thinking people? The former are safe, the latter are profitable.
Just as we are getting totally weary of SPAM, along comes another technology to challenge our boundaries.
The latest thing in phones is something called Voice Over IP or VOIP, where phone calls are send over the internet much like an email, but in real time. It is being adopted for much the same reasons as email: it’s cheaper.
Well, guess what? Spammers are looking at Voice Over IP too – and for the same reason. If they can send one million emails for almost nothing and get a sufficient enough response, what about a million automated phone calls? So, yes, they are looking to use the new technology to flood people with advertising messages.
There is already a new acronym for this: SPam over Internet Telephony or SPIT.
There are two ways this happens. First is the already too familiar recorded message when we pick up a call. The second is injecting messages directly into the voice mail box. For example, Toronto based Infolink Technologies Ltd. Sends out thousands of unwanted voice messages directly into voice mail boxes without ever ringing a phone, Nice, eh?
As with spam, there are the annoying advertising messages and then, there are the malicious ways of messing up your systems including people sitting outside your building tapping in through an unguarded wireless router.
As both phone and data start sharing the same protocols and the same physical connections, the same security issues arise – and the same issues with security holes arise.
If you are used to the phone simply being installed and letting it run without problems for several years, you will be surprised by the ongoing maintenance that VOIP will generate.
The proposed “Back Scatter XRay” machines have privacy advocates up in arms again. They claim that it is like being stripped naked for the guards. They have a point. Even today, with only regular security cameras, airport guards have been caught using the cameras to “watch” people.
Human nature can not be eliminated.
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Dave Randolph,
President, Prairie Trail Software