Focus on the goal

Ask anyone involved in a technology project about what’s important and you will generally get the answer – it’s the people. Obvious really, because these projects are social. They are about people helping other people solve problems, get better services, support themselves and each other. They are not about factories, robots, computerised ticketing or online payment systems.

Of course the technology is hugely important because that is what makes the difference – by helping deliver the services, by triggering change, challenging ways of working through the shift in power relationships it can enable. And also because many people don’t have access, don’t understand, and can’t use new technologies. It is transformative, disruptive, empowering, divisive all at the same time.

Because the technology is unfamiliar, we may assume that it is thing we most need to learn about, if a project is to succeed. In fact, the technology often turns out to be the easy bit. If you ask where things most often go wrong, you’ll usually hear about lack of uptake (by people), poor relationships (among people) and obstacles in organisational cultures (developed and maintained by people).The trick is understanding how people are likely to respond to your project, what they really need, and how far the organisational settings they are in will help or not.

What is of supreme importance is the purpose of your project. It’s a bit like the scene in Alice in Wonderland, when Alice meets the Cheshire Cat and ask for directions:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

If these technologies are the new Wonderland, we still have to care about where we want to get to. This means asking the old questions: why are we doing this, who is it for, what do they need? Only then can we work out which wonderful technology tools might help ... and whether they will work for us, and for others colleagues.