ContinuousNEXT

As 2019 begins with great anticipation, so do the groans of many team members in despair of what new technology we are going to be trying to force upon them. But as history has shown us, the ability to adapt to change is a key component to surviving in today’s ever changing environment. Recently the research firm Gartner at its annual Symposium commented that the Technology & IT world must ready their companies for “ContinuousNext”- implying that everyone should be prepared “in order to face and adopt to changes in technology, competition and business.”

Mike Harris vice president of Gartner suggested IT executives consider a new formula: (Mindsets + Practices) x Technology = Capabilities. As an example, Harris discussed the changes that have occurred in competitive cycling over the past decade, where shifts in culture, technology, and process have led to much faster results. In each of the cases, Harris and the other Gartner analysts urged attendees to consider “shift, shape, and share” as strategic principles.”

From <https://www.pcmag.com/article/364413/gartner-move-from-digital-transformation-to-continuousnext>

Industry culture has always seemed to be the biggest hurdle to overcome as new technology gets implemented, and this was also discussed quite a bit by the presenters. In today’s world, updates appear monthly or perhaps even weekly. However, what we must help our staff to realize is that while change may come more frequently it is increasingly incremental. Even Microsoft’s Windows OS is being treated as a service and by and large introducing incremental change with bi-annual releases.  Updates to the Microsoft Office is even more frequent and granular. So we must ask ourselves how to better prepare our staff for the increasing rate of change with our toolsets, understanding that these are not dramatic changes?

Training in this environment is a challenge and different training approaches must be considered for each software platform for staff to be able to adopt new features promising increased productivity. So in the always updating world of project delivery software, training must evolve to make the best use of staff’s time. With this in mind, should our attention be on how to train people to push buttons or should we instead ask ourselves how to train people to learn to adapt to constant application evolution. We need to encourage the desire to know and apply, not simply push button A to get result X.