“You don’t have to fight technology, you have to master it.” That’s what the German journalist and hacker Wau Holland once said.
Coming back from visits to companies in Silicon Valley, Shanghai and Shenzhen, it struck me again how skeptical we are about technology here in Germany and Europe. I get it. We live in safety and prosperity, and much of that rests on industries we now cling to and keep alive, which is only natural. That’s fine, and so is the fear of losing jobs to digitalization. But it isn’t a solution. Digitalization isn’t coming… it’s been here for a long time. Deal with it. The question can’t be: will technology affect my business? It has to be: how can I actively help shape this change? Digital transformation only works if we develop people and teams as persons, not just the technology.
We’re sluggish, well fed, content and we feel safe. And if things go badly, someone else will fix it, the state if nobody else. But that safety is an illusion. Apple, Google, Amazon and co. show every day how fast things can turn for corporations and whole industries. And the impact is getting closer. In 2020, Tesla had a higher market capitalization than VW, Daimler, BMW, GM and Ford combined, and it put its Gigafactory right outside Berlin. Travel on from there and ride the ICE west for an hour, and you might think you’re passing an open-air museum.
Whether Tesla or electric cars are any good is a debate for another day. But they deliver impulses. And we should, no, we must pick them up actively instead of pouring all our energy into preserving what we already have.
Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V?
Silicon Valley has built an ecosystem that works well, one where tech startups and tech giants can scale and grow. And you can walk through Shenzhen, the “Silicon Valley of hardware”, in amazement: road traffic there is almost entirely electric, and urban planning is fed with the city’s data in real time. But how do we bring that over to Germany and Europe? Only the things that work well, that is, without the dark side, such as employees exploiting themselves or total surveillance complete with social scoring.
Adopting single pieces in isolation doesn’t work, or only by accident: a bit of Scrum here, a foosball table there and Casual Friday to round off the week. What often gets forgotten is that things are different here: our framework conditions, rules, values, social system and our history. So none of it can be copied one to one.
A little fair-weather agility then leads straight to frustration among employees (“what have they come up with up there this time?”) and among management (“why can’t they just work in an efficient, agile way?”).
Digital Transformation Needs Personal Development
If we want to keep going down “our” road into the digital age and not steer toward dystopias, we have to put a value back at the center that has sometimes gone out of fashion: humanity. In the end, it’s always a human being, whether employee or manager, software architect, trainee or senior, supplier, provider or customer. That person is who all the technology is supposed to serve, and that person is the most important resource in this transformation.
So successful digitalization needs more than technical development. Above all, it needs the personal development of the people and teams involved. Enough of the paralysis. Straighten yourself up, take a breath and actively shape the future. Then agile values and an agile mindset have a chance to become lived practice instead of empty phrases on the lobby wall.
