I find my smart phone to be a terrific tool and a significant advance over what went before. I have been contemplating this recently because I see a similarity between trying to explain *why* I am happy with my smart phone to my father-in-law and trying to explain why systemic IT improvements make sense to some of my clients.
In both cases, the audience does not share my basic premises. In both cases, there is no "killer app" and no clear analogy from what they know to what they do not know. In both cases, I am asking for a leap of faith.
For my aged father-in-law, who does not particularly want people to be able to interrupt his day with their inane chatter, the mobile phone concept never made sense. Now, when I try to explain that telephony is the minority of what I want my smart phone to do, he chortles with delighted smugness: an expensive phone that isn't even mostly a phone! Imagine the kind of technocratic, free-spending fathead one would have to be to want that! He is becoming a little uncomfortable with the ever-growing percentage of the general population who have joined me in his native city, but he is still happy to soldier on.
However, my point is not his out-of-stepness; rather my point is that my inability to explain to him what he is rejecting. He is rejecting it and then filling in the reasons later. I have failed utterly to convey that the added value is holistic and lies in the totality of the ecosystem. His eyes glaze over when I list the rather large number of functions the "phone" routinely performs for me: check bank balance? Get driving directions? Surf the web to check the hours of a museum? Share links with friends in text messages from which they can go to the same web page? Track my billable hours and expenses? Take photos of friends and family? Take photos of computer parts I need to purchase? Take notes on the train for later access on my desktop? Listen to music? Buy music? Shop for apps for work? Download apps to help me enjoy the museum in which I am standing? It is all too much and too bizarre for him.
So I feel stuck: what benefits he will allow me to present are not enough to explain the actual value of the device+apps+network yet he will not sit through the (admittedly very boring and somewhat peculiar-to-me) actual list. So we have resolved it this way: he is certain that smart phones are expensive toys and that I own one because I like expensive toys, while I shake my head in wonder at what he is missing.
He is not alone in this situation, even in my experience. I have the exact same feeling when I try to explain to IT managers why a given subsystem or middleware is worth building or improving: an endless list of small benefits just does not seem to move people who are not already intimately involved with the given business process. Like a giant jar of small change, which actually has significant value, proposals of myriad incremental improvements sit in the corner, gathering dust.
I really like this post as it captures the problem most of us face, especially when intergenerational perspectives are concerned, introducing technology to the uninitiated.
ReplyDeleteTen years ago, when we studied consultant productivity based on email, we found the top generation often preferred to delegate communications channels and not do it themselves. This occurred despite the fact communications tech made the top consultants much more productive (we have pubs on ssrn.com for anyone who's interested).
My suggestions is to start with what are the benefits to *him* Many of the examples you gave, while marvelous features, don't sound interesting to a retiree: surf web, shop for apps, share links with friends, track billable hours... Many of these aren't even interesting unless you're already doing them (e.g. shopping for apps). Others don't matter if your friends aren't also doing them which is less likely for retirees.
So try this...
Does he have a health issue? Show him an app that tracks calories, footsteps, or medications relevant to his condition. Does he have a stamp/coin/car/wine/sports hobby? Show him the app for that. Does he like scrabble? Show him words-with-friends (my mother in law who never uses technology loves that one).
My other suggestion is to walk him through the literal steps for doing whatever would be most useful to him. Most people won't admit it but the sheer complexity and uncertainty of most tech keeps people from using it. Then they ex post rationalize that they don't need it.
For the consultants, we found that (1) showing them the proof that consultants using the tech were better worked. For your father-in-law this would be the evidence that other aged seniors are happier and having a great time on words-with-friends and improving their health. (2) show them how to literally do each step. Do the background stuff for them. For the consultants, we had an IT guy come to their office, ask about their daily routine, then show each senior exec how to take the right shortcuts. For my mother-in-law, we bought her a kindle and set up words-with-friends. Now she loves it.
My only caution: you will become tech support! :-)
Good luck.