It’s true: sometimes people resist new technologies. But even those who embrace them sometimes have problems making best use of them.

In the 1700s, guns were fairly inaccurate. It was possible for soldiers to line up across from one another, fire all together, and miss most of the people on the other side.

By the time of the American Civil War, guns had become much more accurate. On some level, people knew this. They hunted with more modern guns, after all, so they knew that they could aim and shoot pretty well. And yet quite a few field commanders lined their soldiers up across from each other and fired. They must have been astonished to see how many men were lost in this way.

Fairly quickly, the soldiers caught on and began to use the tactics of guerilla warfare — not unheard of during the American Revolution, but quickly to become the norm during the Civil War.

Without the stress of approaching death, many people fail to adjust to new technologies. You may know people who routinely print out emails, or print and file copies of electronic invoices. You may know people who call to ask whether an email has been received. You may even know people who keep track of data with multiple unintegrated programs or paper ledgers or Post-It notes for that matter, recording the same data many times, in many places, for many people.

Chances are you — or your staff — are doing some things by hand that your software will do. Chances are you’re repeating some actions when there’s no need or benefit for doing so.

And chances are, it isn’t a matter of life and death, as the failure of soldiers to grasp the changes in weaponry can be. But it may well be a matter of ROI, productivity, or job satisfaction.

Look around your office and see if there are places where your office culture is lagging behind your available technology. If you have trouble finding them, Clevertech can help. If in fact your technology lags behind your culture, we can help with that, too.

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