MODERN BUSINESS
The key to working
smarter with technology
By Dermot Crowley
W
hen it comes to productivity,
technology is a part of
the solution, and a part
of the problem! Remember when
computers were first introduced to
your workplace, and the excitement
you felt about their potential? Or
when you got your first Smart Phone
and dreamed about how much your
productivity was going to improve?
OK, maybe that was just me! But I
think we did have expectations.
But for many of us, the technology
has not met expectations. The
frustrating thing is the potential is
real. Technology can make us more
productive, and the good news is
you probably have some of the best
productivity technology at your
fingertips already. But to achieve
the potential, you must embrace it.
That means ditching the paper to-do
list, your meeting notepad, and your
coveted sticky notes!
You definitely have an email client
such as MS Outlook, Lotus Notes or
Gmail. These will all have calendars
and task functions built in. You
will also probably have a tool like
OneNote or Evernote on your PC.
And when away from your desk,
mobile technology like Smart Phones
and tablets.
58 ModernBusiness
April 2016
So, with all of these tools designed
to help us to organise ourselves,
why are we still so wedded to paper
tools to manage our work? Why
do most people use an electronic
calendar to manage their meeting
schedule, but still revert to a paper
list to remember what they need to
do? Why do we still bring a paper
notepad to meetings?
I believe the key to working smarter
with technology is to focus on the
right level of value.
information, we don’t hesitate. We
make the shift and embrace the
technology!
If you think about our transition
from paper diary’s to electronic
calendars fifteen or twenty years
ago, we needed more than just the
benefit of capturing our meetings
to convince us to move. A paper
diary can capture meetings just
fine, we believed! But when workers
realised how much more could be
done with meeting information in
Focus
Attitude
Chance of adoption
Sharing
I would be crazy not to!
High
Using
I should consider this
Medium
Capturing
Why would I bother?
Low
If we just see the benefit of a
technology as helping us to just
capture information, we probably will
not move away from our paper tools.
If we also see benefit in how a tools
helps use to use that information,
there is more reason to change.
And if we understand the power of
sharing and collaborating with that
an electronic format, they started
to shift. Being able to zoom in and
out of your schedule. Attaching a
meeting agenda to the event. Moving
meetings without creating a mess.
Brilliant!
But the real brilliance was achieved
by collaborating with other people’s