Technology vs. Tradition

It boggles my mind.  Maybe it should, or maybe it shouldn’t.  Why do businesses take perfectly good tools and break them to fit the broken process.  Why does logic have to leap out the window every time you put a tool into the mix?  You see my job is to find the tools to enable the business.  I put hard work and research into the tools, evaluating them, getting past the sales people, making sure that how we roll out a system meets the needs of the majority not the loudest screamers.  Adopting technology means you have to change the way you do things.  You have to define a process, revamp a process, and make it better.  If we were doing things perfectly we would not have an 80% turnover rate in our management.  Heck, I f we were doing things right, we would all be commanding larger salaries and using the latest tools and be on the cutting edge of technology.

Regrettably, we are not.  Considering the industry we are in it is a shock, and it worries me a little that the technology being used to support the development efforts of our commercial aircraft in the sky is sub-par.  Not because we can’t afford it or don’t know it’s out there, but because we don’t understand it, and besides it’s comfy in this here bubble. 

It is amazing that one person can derail the use of a system and in essence render it ineffective and useless with one email, based upon one conversation with one corporate lawyer, 10 months or more ago.  What is more appalling is the inability to figure out who to talk to about the issues; informing oneself not just up the food chain, but down and laterally too.  The irony of all irony is that I was forced to sit through a 5 minute online “ethics” training that very day about good communication and not discounting people’s input.  

Assuming that everything remains static or will remain so is to be blind and repeat the same mistakes over and over.  Unfortunately many people get paid on that very premise, built careers on it even.  There is comfort in that lack of understanding, and lack of ability to move forward and progress.  “We’ve always done it this way” is our mantra, our comfort zone, our way of spinning out wheels.