Parting Shots

My time here is up, and as you read this I’ll have my feet on the ground My time here is up, and as you read this I’ll have my feet on the groundin Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Moments like these are good times to look back, and the thing that stands out for me is the acceleration of technology.
One the first specials we had just over four years ago, was feature on this emerging thing called call centre. Today, we take call centres for granted. We talk to call centre operators around the world for all kinds of enquiries, and everyone’s got them in their organisations. Call centres even come under new label called CRM – customer relations management.
So, it became obvious from this desk that managing an organisation was increasingly going to be driven by technology.
That’s not to say that the other elements of managing weren’t still important.
The new trick, so to speak, was to incorporate managing in this fast changing, technological environment.
That New Zealand enterprise has been changed by new set of technologies is beyond doubt.
Even faster computers connected through high-speed networks, or embedded in almost everything we use, are making their impact in organisations around the country – just as rail and road transport did in the last century.
We just have to keep remembering that the technology is tool for doing the job better.
When I started here copy for story was faxed into this office, and retyped into the computer. Needless to say it’s taken for granted that it’s all emailed these days and the layers of hard copy processes have all but been eliminated. One thing technology hasn’t done yet is figured out way to avoid having to physically read the copy. I’m sure they’re working on it (and I don’t mean voice recognition). I just hope it never takes off – I hope we’ll always want to read.