In early 2020, like many others we were unsure of what the future would hold. Like many organizations, we adopted new technologies and even technologies that weren't quite ready for prime time but worked in a pinch! It is hard to believe that over 2 years later we are still dealing with the effects of Covid in our personal lives but also in the business world, but like many of you, I'm starting to hear enthusiasm about the future from our clients.
We all navigated the chaos of working from home, helping our kid's math homework and adopting the technologies that made it possible for many organizations to not only survive, but really thrive during the pandemic. (Yes, we know that unfortunately, a lot of businesses were not successful in surviving, and our best wishes go out to all those business owners and their employees).
Adopting new technologies in the new world will not be enough for the future. As much as I hope a pandemic like this never happens again, and disastrous weather and acts of god magically stop happening, we all know that is probably not going to be the case moving forward. Organizations need build up their ability to adapt for the future. Anyone can adopt a new technology or process, but adaptability means that we'll be proactive, as well as reactive, to changes in our customers, geopolitical risks, work from anywhere, generational workers, and the myriad of new changes that will be coming our way. As an example, companies adopted new technologies before the pandemic, but adoption is not adaptation. A company that bought extra bandwidth because customers were purchasing more products online or employees were working from home simply adopted a technology. The companies that rethought how to manage employees, measure performance of products and productivity, and support their employees and customers with this technology truly adapted to the new world.
Technology will always drive the adoption and adaptation of new challenges, but we believe there are three core components to the new world of work.
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Trust - Organizations that have the employees and vendors they can trust to lead them into the next transformation required. Trusted advisors tends to be over used in today's world of technology consultants, but organizations should have a vendor / partner that helps them understand the risks and the rewards of their strategic digital roadmap, and ensure that options (both technology and process) are being brought forth that best controls and measures the risk.
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Learning ability - "A jack of all trades master of none, is oftentimes better than a master of one." - Robert Greene. I love this line, because with technology advancing at a pace that no human can ever keep up, you need a team of people (employees and trusted partners) that work together on finding the right solutions at the right time. This requires individuals and teams that push information and decisions from the bottom up. Partners that don't just do as their told, but do what is best for the client and have the courage to push it, back it up and get it done.
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Collaboration and innovation - Process and rules always have their place in the organization, but organizations need to have flexibility with their people and technology to provide a work environment that allows for easy collaboration and innovative thought. Technologies have come a long way in the last two years to assist with this. Having a partner that works with and has relationships with the people is vital in to develop the innovation required to push an organization forward.
Talking about the accelerated pace of business and technology, did not prepare us for last two years or make it any easier. In fact only recently have our clients started talking to us again about technology enhancements. Vsol has spent the last two years working with our clients on how to adapt to this new world. Through strategic planning, designing their operational backbones and collaborating with key individuals, we start adapting to the new work environment, the new customer experiences and preparing for the next challenge. Now it is time to start building better communication platforms (unified communication), preparing for possible challenges (IT resiliency), updating your backbone platform (Data Center & Infrastructure), cause the adaptability is pro-active as much as re-active.
