The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation (Management on the Cutting Edge)

by Gerald C. Kane

Developing-stage companies follow a different approach. These companies expect employees to adopt digital platforms by building them—not dissimilar to the mantra “If you build it, they will come,” from the 1989 Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams.8 While managers know that employees will not be driven by magical forces urging them to adopt new initiatives, they often don’t provide the type of time, support, and motivation to adopt that would be necessary in other settings. Instead, companies often spend considerable time, money, and energy implementing digital platforms, expecting that the value of this technology will become so apparent to employees that they will be naturally drawn to use them to perform their work. And certainly, designing a user-friendly tool or platform with obvious value to the user is undoubtedly important. But companies that simply expect employees to adopt generally emphasize the technological side of implementation—and often execute that implementation well—while forgetting to accompany the new digital infrastructure with the organizational change management initiatives required.