Success in Technology: Step-by-Step

The best thing I've learned in this business is practicality. I've seen things that haven't worked - it's new technology, it's a new team, it's a huge promise made that you can't deliver on. There are so many unknowns and so many new things that are factored in. It's hard to say with any certainty what the outcome will be. Being practical with technology means we need to do things in phases. If we're talking about some big thing we're going to deliver in a year and a half, we won't deliver that one big thing a year and a half from now. We'll deliver a lot of little things in one-and two-month increments.

When we approach a problem, we look at the technology we're putting together that will allow us to program or build this solution. Technology for technology's sake is worthless. Technology must allow our customers to do something for their business - the outcome has to be practical; it has to make sense. And if there's a difference between three years ago and now, it's that whole concept of being practical, which in business terms means we'll have an ROI on this thing we're doing.

We need to remember that when we do things for technology, it's never for the sake of the technology itself. There must be some end result we're trying to achieve. And so, for example, if we say the purpose of our system is "to streamline operations," at the end of the day, we're allowing our customer to handle the same amount of volume with fewer people - and then take those people who have been freed up and put them in some other part of their organization. The choices we make as a group should be driven by the positive effect they have for our customer and for their business.

Practicality is one of the golden rules of technology: If it makes sense, it works and gets adopted. If it doesn't make sense, people won't use it. When I look at technologies that haven't worked, I always see a reason, often as simple as, "It didn't make sense." For example, Pets.com, back in its heyday, sold dog food at a negative gross margin, and they would deliver it to my doorstep for less than I could buy it for in the pet store. It didn't make sense. It was a good thing for me as a buyer, but it wasn't a good thing to invest in, and it wasn't a business concept that made a whole lot of sense. A technology that does make sense is e-mail - the ability to connect us all through a common network backbone, so messages can freely flow between individuals.

The second golden rule relates to Jeffery Moore's concept of "Crossing the Chasm." This rule states there will be a period in which the technology you're developing is new and experimental - so much so that you won't be able to pay your bills with it. We see this often in the training side of our business. When we come up with a new training session or a new book, too few people need it in the beginning to be able to support a business. Moore referred to the idea as "crossing the chasm." It means there's a gap between early adoption and mass adoption. As a business, if you're just trying to be a pure-play company on the early adoption technologies, and you don't have money or the rest of the company behind you to support your journey into mass adoption, you won't be in business for long.

People I have seen who are successful outside of our organization say it's hard work, and that nothing great ever comes easy. Shortcuts don't allow you to build something that is great or that endures. Obviously, being smart is a good thing. Unlike with hard work, you can't teach someone to be smart.

Yet to me, the most important attribute is attitude. Even though it seems like a new-age concept, we control what we think about. We can think about all the things that are wrong, and all the reasons the economy is not going the way we think it should. We can think about all the things that can be bad for us - my brain can spew forth a ton of ideas, facts, and statements that are negative. But we can also turn things inside-out and say, in light of this, "What can we do? What are the things that are possible?" My brain can come up with that list, as well.

So the biggest thing is having a positive attitude, and in an organization attitudes are contagious. So if there's a doom-and-gloom mentality, that's contagious - but if there's belief that anything is possible, that will be contagious, too.