Black and White Television

I am old enough to remem­ber watch­ing a black and white tele­vi­sion as a kid. No, I am not talk­ing about black and white movies on a color tele­vi­sion, I am refer­ring to a tele­vi­sion with no color. When I grew up, color tele­vi­sion was not ground­break­ing, but it was still an upgrade from the tech­nol­ogy of black and white sets. Color was optional. This was really a buzz kill when watch­ing The Wiz­ard of Oz the 1 time a year CBS aired it — Kansas and Oz both looked like Cal­i­for­nia. Steadily black and white tele­vi­sion went away. Now color tele­vi­sion is an assump­tion — an expec­ta­tion. Sure peo­ple talk about how vivid the color is because pix­els or mir­rors or yel­low, but they don’t brag about the fact that the tele­vi­sion just has color.

Social media and tech­nol­ogy are sim­i­lar. Once upon a time (like 3 years ago), just hav­ing a blog was note­wor­thy. Not so long ago just being on Face­book or Twit­ter was fas­ci­nat­ing to peo­ple. It was exper­i­men­tal. It was new. It was fas­ci­nat­ing that real peo­ple could really talk to one another. How­ever we are quickly mov­ing from an ini­tial exper­i­men­ta­tion, past fas­ci­na­tion to a time where social tech­nolo­gies are an expec­ta­tion. Just being there is no longer enough to raise a lot of eye­brows. Being there is like color tele­vi­sion — an expectation.

Now, we are start­ing to ask “why?” when a com­pany lacks a social pres­ence on the web. Busi­nesses with no social pres­ence look more and more like black and white tele­vi­sion every day. Mean­while, our fas­ci­na­tion with just hav­ing col­ors on a tele­vi­sion is being replaced with actu­ally pay­ing atten­tion to the shows that are on it. A cou­ple of years ago, if your com­pany decided to actu­ally talk to cus­tomers pub­licly on the web, peo­ple would talk about how inno­v­a­tive your firm was. Now, not being there is what peo­ple talk about. Seems crazy, but the world is evolv­ing very rapidly these days, and those that can not adapt will struggle.

Every dis­rup­tive new tech­nol­ogy changed the mar­ket sim­ply through its mere intro­duc­tion and adop­tion. The car killed the buggy whip. The tele­phone killed the tele­graph. Early adopters who fig­ure out new appli­ca­tions for new tech­nol­ogy often reap rewards, but once every­one adopts it is not an advan­tage in and of itself. It is just another expec­ta­tion. My first sales job required me and my col­leagues to use pay phones fre­quently. When I got a cell phone, it made me faster than them… for a while. Then they caught on, and it became an expec­ta­tion. The same is now true with smart phones and mobile devices that empower us to be pro­duc­tive any­time, any­where. It becomes an expec­ta­tion, and the play­ing field lev­els. Results were dri­ven by the adop­tion of tech­nol­ogy, but really had more to do with just being good at sales. Tech­nol­ogy can drive effi­ciency, but it requires effec­tive­ness to cre­ate real results.

I am not smart enough to claim to know what plat­forms will be most suc­cess­ful 2 years from now, nor am I dumb enough to lie about it. There is still a sig­nif­i­cant amount of exper­i­men­ta­tion going on in the space, dri­ving con­tin­ued fas­ci­na­tion for me and oth­ers. What I do know is that regard­less of where you do it, openly engag­ing with peo­ple is becom­ing an expec­ta­tion. Get over your appre­hen­sion. Do some exper­i­men­ta­tion. Move beyond fas­ci­na­tion, and get busy with going far beyond the new level of expectation.

Bot­tom line: Fig­ure out how tech­nol­ogy can improve your processes and empower your peo­ple. Use it to be more effi­cient with things and more effec­tive with peo­ple. Make it easy for peo­ple talk about the amaz­ing things you do for your cus­tomers, and not just the fact that you are using technology.