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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

 Technology, more than any other single factor, is what drives an economy forward.

Ironically, technology is, more than any other single factor, what holds individual companies back.

Is it what drives economies forward? Of course it is. In the absence of technological change, products and systems eventually optimize themselves, whether through the natural selection imposed by the marketplace, or by the eventual impatience of ingenious employees faced with an inefficient status quo.

Yes, painful as the message may be, without new technology, new-and-improved starts to mean the same old products in new packaging, just as without new technology, internal process improvement starts to mean fixing what’s broken by breaking what’s fixed: Once the stupid stuff is gone, process changes involve trade-offs. Or, to put it a different way, quality might start out being free, but it doesn’t stay that way.

Without new technology, business change is mostly a zero-sum game.

But with new technology? New technologies means new capabilities, some of which might prove useful. Startups base new products on it; established firms might build it into existing products (or else buy the more promising startups). People and companies with money to spend decide to buy the new or improved products, which means that by definition there’s now more wealth in the system than there was before.

And so, the new technologies have moved the economy forward.

Meanwhile, an average CIO in an average business has just survived (barely) an ERP implementation. Was it a good idea? Maybe.

For companies that want an integrated business architecture, ERP is a necessary … not sufficient, but necessary … precondition. Why? Because that’s what ERP does — provide an integrated informational view of an enterprise — and if you don’t buy and implement a commercial alternative you’ll just go through the enormous effort of building your own.

For companies pursuing a more entrepreneurial or holding-company approach, ERP mostly puts all the business units on a common accounting platform — nice, but not a big deal in the greater scheme of things.

Or else it puts handcuffs on the internal entrepreneurs and no-longer-independent business units.

But never mind all that. What matters this week is that the company in question now has an ERP suite in place. Or, if you like cloud stuff better, the company has bought a bunch of Salesforce licenses, configuring it to support its sales and sales management practices and integrating it into its (you know this is coming) ERP suite.

Or … pick your poison: Software that does important stuff for a company takes time and effort to implement. And then, every year, the company in question adds a swarm of small enhancements to tailor and adjust the system so it fits the company even better.

All this represents more than just sunk cost, although the sunk cost is nothing to sneeze at.

No, even more than sunk cost, the software a company runs on represents a collection of ingrained habits — the software becomes embedded in the business culture.

And now, to pursue new opportunities, or to compete with businesses that have newer and better systems to support their operations, or because the company’s old business model has run out of gas and the company has to do something different or die … for one of these reasons or maybe a different one, the company has to do something its current suite of applications won’t support very well.

Faced with the need to rip out and replace major chunks of the company’s business infrastructure, in order to support a new and untried business direction, it’s easy to find dozens of reasons to coast along for one more year, leveraging the sunk costs instead.

What’s the solution? Is there a solution?

According to legend, when American Airlines first invented frequent flier, it ran the whole program on electronic spreadsheets for three years, until it was able to build a “real” system to handle the program. True or not, the concept points the way: When trying out a new business concept, don’t invest in a robust, scalable systems architecture. Doing so will take everyone’s eyes off the ball. Instead, cobble together capabilities out of whatever cheap alternatives will be good enough to get by.

This is, after all, a new business. Nobody knows what it will really need.

And when nobody knows what they really need, there’s no point investing heavily in it.

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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

It happened again this year.

For the sixteenth consecutive year since I first started publishing on a regular basis, not one graduating class invited me to be their commencement speaker. It’s too bad, because I’m ready:

Ahem. Tap tap tap … is the mike working? It is? Good.

You’re members of the millennial generation. You’re all supposed to be like something or other, just like members of Generation X, Generation Y, Boomers, and whatever were supposed to be like something or other.

Whether you are or aren’t, I don’t much care, because if the best I can do in figuring out who you are is based on your age, I’m as pathetic as if your attitudes and behavior were actually predictable because of your age.

Nonetheless, when you leave here today you’ll probably start looking for a job, and the people who will be interviewing you will have read innumerable articles preparing them for dealing with millennials.

They’ll have read you’re more interested in what they can do for you than in what you can do for them. They’ll have read you have helicoptering parents who have shielded you from the realities of the world. They’ll have read you have no work ethic, are entitled, and can’t spell, too.

Disappoint them.

There’s a good chance the person who expects you to have no work ethic came of age in the 1960s, when we were all tuning in, turning on, and dropping out. Take care not to bring this up. Nobody likes to be told they’re a colossal hypocrite, especially when that’s what they are.

And if they didn’t grow up in the ’60s, they might have entered the workforce in the ’70s, when disco was king. Don’t bring this up either – nobody likes to be reminded they once wanted to dance just like John Travolta.

In any event, welcome to the 2013 employment marketplace. Even if you were a business major, I doubt anyone ever told you what you’re in for. Let me be the first.

Oh, wait. I can’t, because work environments are no more uniform and stereotypeable than you are. There are great places to work and there are dismal ones. There are marvelous leaders and putrid dinks. There are supportive teams and poisonous backstabbing circles.

Your ability to figure out what you’re likely to be dealing with before you sign up as an employee will be distinctly limited, and for many of you it won’t matter if you could: You need a job and this is the only one available.

To get and keep the job, whatever it is, remember this: You’re the only person interested in what’s best for you. Keep it firmly in mind, and just as firmly to yourself. When you talk with a prospective employer all that matters is what you can do for the person you’re talking to. Don’t bring up your expectations, your aspirations, the kind of work environment you’ll thrive in … none of it.

If someone asks, keep your answer as brief as possible, because this is what’s called a disqualifying question — one where you can do yourself some harm, but can’t do yourself any good. Give a nice, safe, short answer and turn the conversation back to what you can do for them. Do this to be selfish — it’s how you’ll get the job.

Project an aura of professionalism, which is, “I have no problems, I cause no problems, and I’ll solve your problems.” Also, project versatility … you aren’t going to say no to an assignment just because you haven’t been trained to handle that specific type of challenge.

Oh … and don’t even think of discussing the compensation you want. Most likely there’s no point to it: For your first job, they’ll offer you the standard going rate and as you have no track record, only a transcript, the going rate is what you’re going to get. For your first job, half your compensation consists of what the job will do for your resume.

Why aren’t your needs just as important as your prospective employer’s needs? They are. To you. But that doesn’t matter, and if the point isn’t clear, imagine that instead of looking for a job, you’re shopping for a car. And as you do, the people trying to sell you one talk about nothing except how much it matters to them that you buy it, because that will help them win this month’s sales contest and increase their commissions.

You don’t care about that. You care about getting the best car for the best price.

Welcome to the 2013 job market. You’re the car.

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