One Year On!
A little more than a year ago, I joined Blyce, a great company whose mission is Digital Transformation for Governments in Small Islands and Developing Countries.
During that time, I’ve been pretty absent from Social Media since I have been working with our teams on our strategy for 2030 & beyond, getting to know the company, our mission, our solutions, our great clients, and of course, our wonderfully skilled & diverse set of employees.
Those who know me know this represents a big change for me, previously I’ve worked on big projects with big companies, often for big organizations, and in big tech – at Blyce we operate at a different scale, many of our clients number their citizens in the 10’s of thousands rather than 10s, or 100s, of millions, with IT departments that might be a hand full of people rather than the thousands that we see in the worlds largest governments.
And what have I learned?
You might be surprised to hear that, big or small, the lessons are the same, but for our clients, they are significantly amplified:
- Focus is everything
- Realism is fundamental
- Simplicity is essential
Not surprising, then, but why the amplification?
We know fundamental business decision making depends on the available budget and resources.
As technology providers, we must pay attention to the circumstances of our clients, we have to ensure that we are designing the solutions and services that are fit for purpose and also fit within their scale and their budgets.
Our mission is to support our clients’ digital transformation journeys to help them improve their public services – to do that, we have to right size for our clients and their communities: remember it is not about the technology, it’s what we do with it that matters!
Which drives us to Focus – focus is key, to the success of our business, and the success of our clients. Their need is for something focused for their specific situation, not something for every possible situation.
All technology companies these days put a lot of attention on the concepts of ‘customer first’ and ‘my customers customer’, both of which are critical, but often what is asked versus what is needed are two very different things.
As technology producers and consumers, we often get way too excited about what is possible and forget to focus on what is truly needed.
On Realism
There are a multitude of organizations out there bringing the promise of extraordinary results if you buy their solution, follow their program, hire their resources, etc.
And there are superb solutions, programs, and resources out there.
However, with limited bandwidth, even the time it takes to assess these things can be more than is manageable.
As technology providers, we need to be realistic about what is manageable for our clients, given their scale, resources, and responsibilities.
This brings me to Simplicity
Or to use a Don Draper quote that an ex-colleague of mine uses all the time, ‘make it simple but significant’ (thanks @LailaFettah) – technology can do ‘anything’ and that ability is accelerating, particularly with AI developments, but does it help us in this specific situation? I am often asked if I plan to add more AI to our solutions and of course, my consultancy training kicks in the answer being ‘it depends’ a glib answer to an absolutely fundamental question.
The real answer is: Yes, I will be looking at adopting more AI, if it helps our clients and their citizens, whilst remembering that there are hidden costs and risks for our clients and their citizens.
We know that transparency, explainability, and ethical application are essential to good adoption of AI, particularly for Government.
To really achieve that requires a lot from an organization – from developing policies, implementing and training people, managing and maintaining models, applications, data, etc.
That comes at a price, and the question we have to continually ask is: does it bring enough advantage to justify the spend?
A follow-up question…
Relates to the potential to increase energy consumption, in places where energy might not be a guaranteed commodity, does it bring enough advantage to warrant the increased energy consumption (and of course, the related impact on sustainability goals)?
It might feel like I am getting ‘grinchy’ and raining on the parade of future tech – but for me this is about taking mindful moments, to check my enthusiasm for what we could do, versus what we should do being focused, realistic, and keeping it simple, doing the right things, in the right way to meet the needs of our specific chosen market.
Many technology companies see growth as increasing focus on bigger countries, bigger markets, and bigger governments.
At Blyce, we measure our growth in terms of our ability to serve countries that are often not well served by big technology companies.
Our source of pride, and at the heart of our 2030 strategy, is to continue to right-size digitization and reduce the digital divide between the more tech-forward, resource-rich regions and those who are, in some cases, at the start of, or are constrained in their digital transformation journeys.
Which means even the smallest decisions we make can have a huge impact on our clients.
And why is this super exciting for me?
Because:
Even the smallest decisions we make can have huge impact on our clients!
As we execute on our Blyce2030 strategy, this amazing journey that we are on together with our clients.
I look forward to sharing the highlights and how we have worked to keep focus, be real, and keep it simple.
