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Introduction
In today's increasingly automated world, the most important part of your business is your people. Without them you would not be able to accomplish your business objectives. All too often, however, the appeal of technology leads many companies to ignore or discount their people because technology can do many things better and faster than people.
Yet without people the fastest, most complex software is useless. We often forget that computers are only machines that require human judgment and experience to be most effective. More often than not (and probably more often than we would like to admit), it is the failure to understand how people and technology interact that causes a business venture to fail or at least not to fulfill its potential.
Why Should You Hire a Historian?
It does not seem apparent at first that a historian has anything relevant to offer business in the technological age. Yet history itself is littered with examples of how people interact with technology. The most obvious example, of course, is the resistance put up by French peasants during the Industrial Revolution, when they would use their wooden shoes (or sabots) to damage the machines that they were operating in the factories.
The point here is that we have before us concrete incidents of the interaction between people and technology. The pattern is everywhere the same, whether we examine factory disturbances in the early nineteenth century or dissect the soft factors that caused an expensive software implementation to fail.
What, then, can a historian offer you?
The Advantage
Time and again we hear about midnight software roll-outs or failed consulting engagements because the teams that implemented the changes understood only imperfectly how their decisions might affect the people who were supposed to use the new software or adapt to the new changes.
The fact is that people invest a lot in their jobs and any changes that do not take this into account will always run into resistance. No one likes to have their identity threatened by something that they fear (rightly or wrongly) might be able to do their jobs better than they can. Understanding this is the ultimate difference between success and failure in business.
Having someone on your team who can bring this understanding to your clients' problem gives you a distinct advantage over those who rely simply on one kind of knowledge or expertise. You will be able to minimize client resistance to the changes which you implement and help them to respond on their terms and assimilate them more quickly.
The proper training and preparation of your client's personnel for the change and roll-out will thus ease the transition and save time and money--both yours and the client's--and that means added value for your business and theirs. You will also gain the added benefit of a long-term perspective. Rather than simply focusing on current issues and immediate solutions, you will be able to evaluate possible consequences and results and thus prevent problems for your business and your client's down the road.
Read On...
If you are looking for intelligent, capable people who are able to learn anything quickly and who enjoy using that knowledge to solve challenging, complex problems, you have come to the right place. If you are interested in learning more about what a historian can do for you, please contact me.
Let me show you what I can do for you!
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