In our Zoom-fatigued, stressed-out world of 2020, how can we build a better way to work?
It’s the question on most business leaders’ minds right now — not to mention school superintendents and principals. How do we get the right resources to make our new perma-work-from-home reality actually work?
I recently got an answer that helped me think differently.
I was talking to Bob Walters, President and COO of Rocket Mortgage. I asked him how he uses technology to make work better. His response was mostly about culture — and not a lot about technology. But when he did talk about technology, he framed it in in an obvious way, but one that we don’t talk about much.
Technology = tools to solve problems
Bob knows that you can’t create a better experience just by buying new technology. “When I think of technology, I just think of tools,” he told me. “Fire was a technology, the wheel is a technology, the printing press is a technology. If you just think of tech as tools, then you can think about how to best use tools. How do you leverage them? How do you incorporate them? Because a tool is useless without a user and a use case to adopt it.”
“A lot of people think, ‘What’s my technology budget? What can I go buy?’ but the real question is, ‘What are you trying to solve?’ How are you going to change people’s lives for the better?”
