At the very end of 2021, I attended a conference in Wellington, NZ, called Innovate. It was hosted by Public Sector Network, and presentations were centered around four themes: Technology & Transformation, People and Culture, Data and Analytics, Digital and Citizen Experience.
The conference was great. If anything resonates in this blog, there is another in Australia (Sydney) on March 22nd that TEAM IM will attend, all going well. Australians: check it out!
I'm going to pick two things that stood out for me, although there were many more.
The first was the vibe of the conference. This was the first live event in about two years for many of us there. The short, sharp lockdown to end COVID back in March of 2020 had become a series of lockdowns as we move into our third year. So a live event with over 200 attendees was a special event indeed. I jokingly said that even introverts came up and talked to me, although I suspect there is as much truth as humour in that comment.
So the takeaway was observing just how much people seemed to thrive in this currently rare social setting. With one of the themes of the conference being "people and culture," there was certainly insight to be gained and applied from observing the positive role that social interaction plays in our lives. We've all experienced some degrees of isolation over the past two years, and I hope this event is a harbinger of better times ahead.
The other insight comes from some great conversations from "captains of the industry." I had gone to the conference with a couple of ideas jumping around my head and looked forward to seeing what people thought about this as it related to their work roles.
One thought that I have been musing on is, "how do you put the human back into the automation?"
One of my product areas is process intelligence tools. We help organisations review existing business processes and identify exactly where changes, leveraging technology, will provide significant improvements to important business processes.
Governments have a lot of processes that engage citizens in every area of their life. I've seen some automated processes not cope well with the inevitability that sometimes, scores and thresholds can exclude the very people you are trying to help, and an inappropriate form letter can scream, "we see you as a number, not a person." We can miss cases where it is necessary to look deeper into a person's unique life and situation. For some processes, putting a person through the trauma of starting over and attempting to be heard can be soul destroying.
As I said, I had some great conversations around this topic throughout the day. I was pleased to hear from managers that understand that every business process needs that ability to quickly and automatically process the ones you are saying yes to so that your staff can spend more time on the cases that the "computer says no," to ensure that this is where we bring the human to human conversation into the response.
The other aspect of that process is the governance process. How were they designing their processes so that saying "no" to a person at the other end of that decision was for the right reasons, not because of some possible blowback to the worker who used their discretion to say "yes" on the assessment of the exceptions? That was a trickier discussion, and suffice to say, the broader themes around people and culture underscore how critical it is to have principle-based leadership that encourages and welcomes everything that is required for us to remember that being human is essential to our collective well-being.
At the beginning of this pandemic, we were encouraged to be kind. This was inspirational in the early days of lockdown. I think we've lost our way a bit over the last two years, and it is up to all of us to reclaim it and apply it to our immediate sphere of influence.
May 2022 move us in the right direction.
About TEAM IM
TEAM IM is a global enterprise solutions and technology company. Utilizing best-in-class technologies to put unstructured data to work, TEAM IM has successfully implemented thousands of business solutions across a diverse spectrum of organizations of varying sizes and industry focus. TEAM IM’s offerings include expert professional services, managed support services, custom development, and solutions in many areas, including Content Management, Records Management, Workflow, Analytics, and Collaboration. TEAM IM has offices across the globe, with resources in every discipline and service offering available to support you, wherever you’re located. For more information, visit our website.
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