So, imagine a company hires a new employee, best in the business, who's on a multimillion-dollar contract. Now imagine that whenever this employee went to go meet with her team members, the appointments were ignored or dismissed, and in the meetings that did happen, she was yelled at or kicked out after a few minutes. So after a while, she just went quietly back to her desk, sat there with none of her skills being put to use, of course, being ignored by most people, and of course, still getting paid millions of dollars. This hotshot employee who can't seem to catch a break is that company's technology.
想像一間公司, 僱用了一個新的員工, 他是業界最好的人, 他的薪資合約高達數百萬美元。 現在,想像一下,每當這位員工 要去見她的團隊成員時, 約好的會面不是爽約就是取消, 就算確實有實際會面, 不到幾分鐘她就被吼罵 或甚至被趕出去。 過一陣子後,她靜靜地 回到自己的座位,坐在那裡。 她的技能通通沒有被拿出來運用, 當然,大部分人忽視她, 當然,她還是能繼續 領那數百萬美元的薪資。 這位似乎一直無法突破 僵局的大咖級員工, 其實就是該公司的科技。
This scenario is not an exaggeration. In my job as a technology advisor, I've seen so many companies make the well-meaning decisions to put huge investments into technology, only to have the benefits fail to live up to the expectation. In fact, in one study I read, 25 percent of technology projects are canceled or deliver things that are never used. That's like billions of dollars just being wasted each year.
上述情境並沒有誇飾。 我的工作是科技顧問, 我曾經見過很多公司 做出立意很好的決策, 對科技砸重金投資, 最後的獲益卻完全不如預期。 事實上,我讀過一份研究, 它說有 25% 的科技專案計畫 會被取消,或是做出來的成品 從來沒有被用過。 也就是說,這些公司每年 浪費了數十億美元在這些科技上。
So why is this? Well, from what I've seen, the expectation from the top management is high but not unreasonable about the benefits from the technology. They expect people will use them, it will create time savings, and people will become genuinely better at their jobs. But the reality is that the people on the front line, who are supposed to be using these softwares and tools, they're skeptical or even afraid. We postpone the online trainings, we don't bother to learn the shortcuts, and we get frustrated at the number of tools we have to remember how to log into and use. Right? And that frustration, that guilt -- it's racking up, the more that technology is inserting itself into our daily working lives, which is a lot.
為什麼會這樣? 嗯,就我的觀點來說, 管理高層對於科技能帶來的益處 期望很高,但不是不合理。 他們期望人們能運用這些科技 來節省時間, 並確實地把工作做得更好。 但,現實是,前線的這些人, 也就是應該要使用 這些軟體和工具的這些人, 他們抱持懷疑或甚至會害怕。 大家會把線上學習向後拖延, 不想費心地去學習捷徑方法, 對於得要記住這麼多工具的 登入方式和使用方式, 感到很挫折。 對吧? 那種挫折感、罪惡感,會不斷累積, 那些科技越是強行介入 我們的日常工作生活當中 越是難受。
Brookings says that 70 percent of jobs today in the US require at least mid-level digital skills. So basically, to work these days, you need to be able to work with technology. But from what I've seen, we are not approaching this with the right mindset.
布魯金斯說,現今在美國, 70% 的工作職位 都需要至少中級以上的數位技能。 所以,基本上,現在若是要工作, 你就得和科技一同工作。 但,就我所知, 我們並沒有用 正確的心態來面對這件事。
So here's the idea that I've been toying with: What if we treated technology like a team member? I've been writing my own personal experiment about this. I've spoken to people from all different industries about how they can treat their core technologies like colleagues. I've met with people from the restaurant industry, medical professionals, teachers, bankers, people from many other sectors, and the first step with anybody that I would meet with was to draw out the structure of their teams in an organization chart.
所以,我把這個想法付之執行: 如果我們把科技當成是 團隊成員來對待呢? 我持續地把這些個人經歷寫成文章。 與來自各種產業的人對談, 談他們可以如何將他們的 核心科技當作同事一樣對待。 我見過餐飲業的人、 醫療專業人士、老師、銀行家、 以及許多來自不同領域的人, 見到每一個人,第一步都是 先在組織圖中畫出 他們團隊的架構圖。
Now, I'm a total geek when it comes to organization charts. Org charts are really cool because, if they are drawn well, you can quickly get a sense of what individual roles are and also how a team works well together. But if you look at a typical org chart, it only includes the boxes and lines that represent people. None of the technology team members are there. They're all invisible. So for each of the organizations that I met with for my experiment, I had to draw a new type of org chart, one that also included the technology. And when I did this, people I spoke to could actually visualize their technologies as coworkers, and they could ask things like: "Is this software reporting to the right person?" "Does this man and machine team work well together?" "Is that technology actually the team member that everybody's awkwardly avoiding?"
談到組織圖,我根本是個怪胎。 組織圖很酷,因為,如果畫得好, 對於每個人的角色, 你馬上就能有點概念, 也能知道團隊如何一起合作。 但如果你仔細觀察典型的組織圖, 只有用方塊和線條 來代表「人」的那種組織圖。 你在上面會看不到 任何一位科技團隊成員。 它們都是隱形的。 所以,在我的實驗中, 針對每一個和我會面的組織, 我都會畫一種新型的組織圖, 把科技也納入其中。 當我這麼做時,和我談的人 就能真正視覺化地 將他們的科技視為同事, 他們就會問這樣的問題: 「這個軟體向『對的人』報告嗎?」 「這個人和機器團隊合作得好嗎?」 「那項科技是大家都覺得尷尬 而會躲避的團隊成員嗎?」
So I will walk you through an example of a small catering company to bring this experiment to life. This is the top layer of people who work at Bovingdons Catering Company. There's a sales director, who manages all of the customer interactions, and there's an operations director, who manages all the internal activities. And here's the people who report to the sales and operations directors. And finally, here's the view where we've overlaid the software and the hardware that's used by the Bovingdons staff. Using this amazing org chart, we can now explore how the human team members and the technology team members are interacting.
我會帶大家一起探討 一間小型餐飲公司的例子, 讓這個實驗能生動呈現。 這是 Bovingdons 餐飲公司的最高層人員。 包括業務主管, 他要管理所有的客戶互動, 還有營運主管, 管理所有內部的活動。 這些則是要向業務 及營運主管報告的人。 最後,在這張圖中, 我們把 Bovingdons 全體員工會用到的 軟體和硬體也列出來, 用這張很讓人驚奇的組織圖, 現在我們可以探討 人類團隊成員和科技團隊成員 要如何互動。
So the first thing that I'm going to look for is where there's a human and machine relationship that's extra critical. Usually, it's somebody using a technology on a day-to-day basis to do his or her job. At Bovingdons, the finance director with the accounting platform would be one. Next, I would check on the status of their collaboration. Are they working well together? Getting along? In this case, it turned out to be a tenuous relationship.
我首先要找的 就是人類與機器之間的關係, 這點格外重要。 通常,這個圖就是某位員工 每天與科技的工作關係圖。 在 Bovingdons, 財務主管與會計平台就是一個例子。 接著,我會察看他們合作的狀況。 他們在一起工作順利嗎?處得來嗎? 在這個案例中發現 他們的關係是很薄弱的。
So, what to do? Well, if the accounting platform were actually a person, the finance director would feel responsible for managing it and taking care of it. Well, in the same way, my first suggestion was to think about a team-building activity, maybe getting together on a specialist course. My second suggestion was to think about scheduling regular performance reviews for the accounting platform, where the finance director would literally give feedback to the company who sold it. Now, there will be several of these really important human and machine teams in every organization. So if you're in one, it's worth taking the time to think about ways to make those relationships truly collaborative.
所以,該怎麼辦? 嗯,如果會計平台真的是一個人, 財務主管會覺得自己 有責任要管理它 並照顧它。 同樣的, 我的第一個建議是要想出 一個建立團隊的活動, 也許可以一起去上一堂專業課程。 我的第二個建議是要為會計平台 安排定期的績效檢討, 在檢討時,財務主管 要提供回饋意見 給販售這個平台的公司。 在每一個組織中,都會有數個 這種重要的「人類──機器」團隊。 如果你是其中一員, 就值得花些時間 想辦法讓那些關係變成 真正的協同工作關係。
Next, I'll look on the chart for any human role which might be overloaded by technology, let's say, interacting with four or more types of applications. At Bovingdons, the operations director was interacting with five technologies. Now, he told me that he'd always felt overwhelmed by his job, but it wasn't until our conversation that he thought it might be because of the technologies he was overseeing. And we were talking that, if the operations director had actually had a lot of people reporting to him, he probably would have done something about it, because it was stretching him too thin, like, move some of them to report to somebody else. So in the same way, we talked about moving some of the technologies to report to someone else, like the food inventory to go to the chef.
接著,我會在圖上尋找有沒有人 可能會因為科技而負荷過多, 比如說,要和四種 以上的應用程式互動。 在 Bovingdons,營運主管 就要和五種科技互動。 他告訴我,他總覺得忙不過來 但一直到我們進行了對談之後, 他才發現原因有可能是 他在監管的科技。 我們在談的是, 如果真的有很多人 需要向營運主管報告, 那他應該得想個辦法來處理這樣的困境, 因為太多人向他報告 會讓他分身乏術, 比如,他可以讓其中一些人 改向其他人報告。 所以,我們用同樣的方式來談 是不是能讓其中一些科技 向其他人報告, 比如食物庫存就向主廚報告。
The last thing that I'll look for is any technology that seems to be on the org chart without a real home. Sometimes they're floating around without an owner. Sometimes they're reporting to so many different areas that you can't tell who's actually using it. Now, at Bovingdons, nobody appeared to be looking after the marketing software. It was like someone had hired it and then didn't give it a desk or any instructions on what to do. So clearly, it needed a job description, maybe someone to manage it. But in other companies, you might find that a technology has been sidelined for a reason, like it's time for it to leave or be retired. Now, retiring applications is something that all companies do. But maybe taking the mindset that those applications are actually coworkers could help them to decide when and how to retire those applications in the way that would be least destructive to the rest of the team.
最後,我還會尋找圖上有沒有 哪一項科技看起來是沒人理的。 有時,它們會到處遊走, 沒有擁有者。 有時,它們要向 許多不同的部門報告, 讓你無法分辨出到底是誰在用它。 在 Bovingdons, 看來並沒有人在照顧行銷軟體。 這就好像是有人僱用了它, 卻沒有給它一張桌子, 沒有指示它要做什麼。 所以,很明顯, 它需要工作內容描述, 也許還需要有人管理它。 但在其他公司中, 你可能會發現有的科技 被冷凍是有原因的, 比如,該是它離開 或退休的時候了。 每間公司都會讓應用程式退休。 但如果調整一下心態,把那些 應用程式當成是真正的同事, 可能可以協助他們決定何時 及如何讓這些應用程式退休, 才能把對團隊中 其他人的傷害降到最低。
I did this experiment with 15 different professionals, and each time it sparked an idea. Sometimes, a bit more. You remember that hotshot employee I was telling you about, that everybody was ignoring? That was a real story told to me by Christopher, a very energetic human resources manager at a big consumer goods company. Technology was a new HR platform, and it had been installed for 14 months at great expense, but nobody was using it. So we were talking about how, if this had really been such a hotshot employee with amazing credentials, you would go out of your way to get to know it, maybe invite them for coffee, get to know their background.
我和十五位不同的 專業人士做過這個實驗, 每次都會有一個新點子冒出來。 有時,還更多。 你們還記得我前面提到的 大咖級員工嗎? 被大家忽視的那位? 那是克里斯多夫 告訴我的真實故事, 他在大型消費品公司工作, 是一位活力十足的人力資源經理, 科技是一個新的人力資源平台, 十四個月前就安裝完成, 耗費很多金錢, 但沒有人在用它。 所以,我們就談起了 如果它真的是個大咖級的員工, 且有驚人的資歷, 你會不遺餘力地去了解它, 也許邀請他們去喝咖啡, 了解他們的背景。
So in the spirit of experimentation, Christopher set up one-hour appointments, coffee optional, for his team members to have no agenda but to get to know their HR system. Some people, they clicked around menu item by menu item. Other people, they searched online for things that they weren't clear about. A couple of them got together, gossiped about the new software in town. And a few weeks later, Christopher called to tell me that people were using the system in new ways, and he thought it was going to save them weeks of effort in the future. And they also reported feeling less intimidated by the software. I found that pretty amazing, that taking this mindset helped Christopher's team and others that I spoke to these past few months actually feel happier about working with technology.
所以,抱持實驗的精神, 克里斯多夫約了一小時, 要不要咖啡自己決定, 這時間要他的團隊成員 沒排別的議程, 只去了解他們的人力資源系統。 有些人會把選單中的 每一個選項都點選過。 其他人則是上網搜尋 他們不清楚的地方。 他們幾個人聚在一起, 八卦這個新來乍到的軟體。 幾個星期之後, 克里斯多夫打電話來告訴我, 大家開始以新的方式 使用這個系統, 他認為將來能為他們 省下數週的功夫。 他們也說自己感覺 比較不怕這個軟體了。 我覺得這相當不可思議, 採用這種心態, 讓克里斯多夫的團隊 以及過去幾個月內 和我談過的其他團隊 都真正覺得和科技共事 變得更快樂些。
And I later found out this is backed up by research. Studies have shown that people who work in organizations that encourage them to talk about and learn about the technologies in the workplace have 20 percent lower stress levels than those in organizations that don't. I also found it really cool that when I started to do this experiment, I started with what was happening between a person and an individual technology, but then it ultimately led to ideas about how to manage tech across entire companies. Like, when I did this for my own job and extended it, I thought about how our data analysis tools should go on the equivalent of a job rotation program, where different parts of the company could get to know it. And I also thought about suggesting to our recruiting team that some of the technologies we work with every day should come with us on our big recruiting events. If you were a university student, how cool would it be to not only get to know the people you might be working with, but also the technologies?
後來,我發現有研究 支持這個方法。 有研究指出,在組織內工作的人, 若鼓勵他們在工作場所 談論科技、學習科技, 他們承受的壓力層級就會比 沒有這麼做的人更低 20%。 我還發現一件很酷的事, 當我開始做這個實驗時, 我是從一個人和一項各別科技 之間的關係當作開端, 但接著,最終還是會延伸到討論 要如何在整個公司當中管理這些科技。 我針對我自己的工作來做 這實驗,並將它延伸出去, 那時我想過,我們的資料分析工具 應該要有類似工作輪班的程式在裡面, 讓公司中不同部門的人 能夠認識它。 我還想過要向 我們的徵才團隊建議, 我們每天會使用的一些科技 應該要和我們一起參加 我們的大型徵才活動。 如果你是大學生, 這是件很酷的事,因為你不只是 認識將來會共事的人, 還有你將來會共事的科技。
Now, all of this begs the question: What have we been missing by keeping the technologies that we work with day to day invisible, and what, beyond those billions of dollars in value, might we be leaving on the table? The good news is, you don't need to be an org chart geek like me to take this experiment forward. It will take a matter of minutes for most people to draw out a structure of who they work with, a little bit longer to add in the technologies to get a view of the entire team, and then you can have fun asking questions like, "Which are the technologies that I'll be taking out for coffee?"
這一切,都帶出了一個問題: 一直把我們每天工作要用到的 科技隱藏起來, 會讓我們錯失掉了什麼? 且,在那幾十億美元的價值之外, 我們可能有什麼沒考量到? 好消息是, 你不需要成為 像我這樣的組織圖怪胎, 也能進行這個實驗。 對大部分的人來說,只要幾分鐘, 就能畫出他們和哪些人 共事的結構圖, 再多花一點時間, 就能把科技也放入, 看到整個團隊的狀況, 接著,你就能享受 問這類問題的樂趣: 「我會邀請哪一項科技 一起出去喝咖啡?」
Now, I didn't do this experiment for kicks or for the coffee. I did it because the critical skill in the 21st-century workplace is going to be to collaborate with the technologies that are becoming such a big and costly part of our daily working lives. And from what I was seeing, we are struggling to cope with that. So it might sound counterintuitive, but by embracing the idea that these machines are actually valuable colleagues, we as people will perform better and be happier.
我做這項實驗並不是為了好玩 或喝咖啡。 我做的目的,是因為在 21 世紀, 在工作場所的重要技能 將會是和科技一起協同工作, 因為科技正在成為我們工作日常中 非常重要的一員。 就我所看到的,我們正在 掙扎著要對付這類狀況。 這聽起來可能有點違背常理, 但若能開放地接受 這些機器其實是有價值的同事, 我們人類的表現也會更佳, 且過得更快樂。
So let's all share a bit of humanity towards the technologies and the softwares and the algorithms and the robots who we work with, because we will all be the better for it.
所以,咱們來分享一點人性給 和我們一起工作的科技、軟體、 演算法和機器人, 因為這麼做能讓我們都變得更好。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)