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Worst Excuse Ever: It Works Perfectly
I was talking to someone a few months ago who mentioned nonchalantly that he was replacing his ten year old Mac, "but not for any good reason." He said it worked fine. But he was sure that the newer version must be better at something.
Skip ahead. Now that the new one's in place - M2 chip and all - he can't believe how much faster it is (of course). But more importantly, he's amazed at how easily it works with . . . everything. The wi-fi never disconnects. The printers are perfect. Bluetooth devices are trouble-free. Everything is better.
That story is very common for all kinds of technologies. Yes, it works. "Works" and "Is good by today's standards" are very different things. I can make a Commodore 64 work. But I'm not choosing it over my Xeon processor with 64 GB of RAM.
You need to find ways to tell your clients that something can "work" and still be a serious drag on their company's productivity and profitability. One of my favorite analogies comes from The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education by W. Edwards Demming. If you're not familiar with Demming, go buy anything he's written and consume it.
In The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, Demming talks about how higher levels of sophistication cause great technologies to be replaced by even greater technologies. One real-world example of this is carburetors. For non-car buffs, carburetors mix fuel (normally gasoline) with oxygen in just the right aerosolized mixture so that it can be sucked into a cylinder and sparked to explosion - creating the combustion in an internal combustion engine.
Carburetors did not die because they were bad technology. They didn't die because they failed frequently. They didn't die because they were unprofitable. They didn't die because they were expensive to maintain. They didn't die because the workers who made them were bad at their jobs.
Carburetors died because fuel injection technology was so much better that carburetors no longer made sense. There are two important things to remember about this. First, the concept of fuel injection dates back to the 1890's. It gradually became practical for diesel engines, airplane engines, and eventually automobiles.
Second, fuel injection "took off" and became extremely popular once digital electronic fuel injection took the place of analog electronic fuel injection. In other words, the technology evolved for a long time before it suddenly became successful. The last new car to be sold in the US with a carburetor was 1994. That's almost 100 years after it was invented.
By the 1990's, carburetors were amazing technological marvels. They were extremely efficient, powerful, and produced almost no pollution compared to even ten years before. But they were simply replaced by much better technology.
It's a similar story for LED screens. The concept (and even working models) had been around for more than twenty-five years. LEDs became practical when the size and cost of memory evolved to the point where you could put a tiny bit of cache behind each pixel. That's when the quality of screens became suddenly so much better - and virtually every other screen technology simply died.
The point, for your clients, is that the old technology they love might work great. But that doesn't make it the right thing for TODAY. If you wander through an antiques mall you'll find nearly unlimited amounts of old technology that works, and works great. But you're only going to drag home a 750-pound Magnavox stereo console if you're a hobbyist.
As a rule, technologies don't die because they fail. In fact, they get better, more reliable, and even cheaper, until - suddenly - superior technology wins the day. Yes, this might take decades. But when the change happens, you really need to get onboard.
A great example right now is battery technology. If you're buying stock in lithium mines, please understand that this is a short-term investment. There are many options competing to be the next generation. And with the sudden interested in electronic vehicles (after 30+ years of development), almost unlimited amounts of money are being spent on research.
Human beings love to "get comfortable" with technology and resist change. But your job, as a highly skilled technical professional, is to give them good advice, not just do what they ask. Someone is going to sell your clients the next level of technology. That should be you.
Comments welcome.
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