Digital Empathy

When tech meets touch Once upon a time there was a department that was set up to work with computers: the data processing department. This was later renamed the information technology (IT) department. Decades after that, IT departments have grown larger and more important to the business continuity than ever before. But with nicknames like ‘the fortress’ or ‘the bunker’, it is clear that IT still often occupies an isolated position inside the organization. That is the last thing you want if digitization is going to make or break your business. So how can IT reinvent itself as a discipline? The answer does not lie in a new process model or a different methodology; the solution starts with empathy. Inquisitiveness, creativity, and empathy are largely what determine the success of IT. This book is for people who are open to change, no matter if you are an IT professional or not. Digital Empathy provides inspiration and something to hold on to - from the ‘why’ to the approach of using eXperience Level Agreements. Read on, and you’ll see what I mean. Or not, in which case there’s always the bumper sticker “I’m not good at empathy; will you settle for sarcasm?”

www.digitalempathy.rocks

DIGITAL EMPATHY

WHEN TECH MEETS TOUCH

MARCO GIANOTTEN

2017, Amsterdam

Author: Marco Gianotten

Editor: Erik Bouwer

Project Manager and digital native: Tess van Genderen

Layout and illustrations: Overhaus, Amsterdam

Printing: Leijten, Amsterdam

Translation: Multitaal, Amsterdam

Yellow Suit: Opposuits

ISBN 978-90-825564-3-8

Copyright © 2017, Marco Gianotten, Giarte

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior, written permission of the publisher.

For my children, Enzo, Boaz and Tirza, and all other digital natives from Generation Z. Along with Generation Y, they will form nearly three-fourths of the active workforce in companies and the public sector in 2025.

About the author

Marco Gianotten is the founder of Giarte. He’s a writer, columnist and inspirational speaker. Marco and his team organize sessions and workshops on digital empathy and the rethinking of Enterprise IT. He’s married and father to three teenagers.

About Giarte

Giarte is a data-driven advisory firm with a passion for simplification. Giarte helps companies to focus relentlessly on user experience and outside-in performance management.

www.giarte.com

BEHIND THE SCENES

The past years, I have advised businesses and inspired people to try a different approach to bogged-down IT projects and outsourcing relationships that they just can’t seem to get off the ground: Look at them from the outside in, discover their true essence and stop hiding behind processes and defending yourself with a ‘conditional yes’ every time. At a certain point, visions and experiences will congeal into a new way of doing things. For me, that led to ‘inventing’ the eXperience Level Agreement (XLA). For years now, my firm Giarte and I have been helping large companies grasp, measure and improve IT. I had seen that the world of ‘soft data’ was miles away from the world of financial and technical performance indicators. The process of bridging those worlds took me back to the drawing board, which is where I came up with the XLA. The past years, that idea was developed into an approach with workshops and tools for measurement and making improvements. More and more people kept asking when I was finally going to put that information together in a handy little book. So I took on that challenge with the help of my team at Giarte.

Marco Gianotten

CONTENTS

DIGITAL EMPATHY
WHY THERE’S NO GETTING AWAY FROM IT

CHAPTER 1
HEADING TOWARDS AN IT CRISIS?

CHAPTER 2
THE INGREDIENTS OF IT — NEW STYLE

CHAPTER 3
EXPERIENCE FIRST WITH THE XLA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

NOTES

READING LIST

INDEX

“Writing is easy, you just have to cross out the wrong words.”

Mark Twain

1835 - 1910

Ask a CEO what he or she lies awake at night thinking about and eliminate all the household problems (mortgage, kids and parents). Chances are that “Can’t keep up with the pace of change” will be somewhere at the top of the list. In this boardroom nightmare, the business model is brought down by a disruptive newcomer. This is all about advances in technology. IT not only forms the basis for nearly every existing business process, but it is also the deciding factor in an organization’s speed and maneuverability. In other words, IT has gone from being a side issue to a major issue. Many a CEO feels the pressure: “We need to transform into a digital company!” At conferences and in the media business, disruption, exponential development, and digital transformation are increasingly the leading topics.

But let’s be honest. Most companies are not Uber, Google, Apple, or Airbnb — far from it. They are neither trendsetting nor agile. Disruptive, perhaps? Not by a long shot. Most companies just keep on toiling away every day in order to survive. Senior executives and CIOs of the larger organizations realize that it takes a lot of time and energy to keep IT systems up and running. After nearly half a century, many companies see IT as synonymous with a complex succession of generations of technology. Maneuverability and flexibility are not exactly the fortes of the average IT environment. That makes it difficult to keep pace with change — let alone make it through digital transformation unscathed. Why is this important? Because anyone who still wants to be around in ten years will need to change course: from the traditional shareholder value model to creating lasting customer value. A company’s ability to differentiate itself lies not in more products, but in services and the customer experience. As the economy goes increasingly digital, it will become ever more important to understand what drives customers, what makes employees successful and what makes companies relevant. The key to success is empathy.

For an organization to clear all these hurdles, the business side and IT side need to work together as a seamless whole. That means sharing the same basic principles and goals as well as speaking the same language. Just as in any relationship, that calls for trust and respect. But people who work in the IT department of a large organization often hear their co-workers complain that they don’t get the respect, esteem or trust that they deserve. The low standing of IT inside the company stands in stark contrast to the increasing importance of new information technology to a company’s right to exist. So what’s going on here? Have IT professionals made it too difficult for the business organization to work with them? Yes. IT still often speaks a language that is incomprehensible to the rest of the organization. IT got away with that for quite a while, which is no big surprise given its internal monopoly on supplying the business organization with computerization. And in doing so, IT left its mark on systems, processes and procedures — and on end users.

But it’s all over as far as the IT monopoly is concerned. Willing or unwilling, business organizations are going their own way today. Cloud IT and mobile applications are major drivers behind shadow IT: systems and solutions that are acquired and applied beyond the IT organization’s range. There are all kinds of risks to these under- the-radar actions by the business organization, which would make an outright ban seem like a logical response. The pressure and desire the business experiences to think digitally for itself only increases. But the fact is that the real reason for shadow IT goes much deeper: a lack of trust in IT.

Ask business managers what they really think of their IT organization and you can expect to hear words like ‘aloof’, ‘slow’, ‘over-detailed’, ‘difficult’, ‘stubborn’, ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘bureaucratic’. Recurring experiences with unsuccessful IT projects and incidents define how managers see their IT organization. Trust has been betrayed in the other direction too. Ask IT professionals what they think of their business organization and they also have negative associations: ‘unrealistic’, ‘nagging’, ‘oblivious’, ‘naive’ and ‘condescending’. When things go wrong in the business organization, people are quick to blame IT.