Digitalisation - dancing around the golden calf?
Frank Schabel, strategy consultant and interim manager, worked for many years in management roles in marketing and corporate communications
Published in: DiALOG - THE MAGAZINE FOR DIGITAL CHANGE | 2021
One key response to coronavirus is that we need to digitalise work, health and indeed our entire lives even faster and more deeply. Ideally, we will project our analogue world onto a digital surface in future in order to process it more effectively there. Some companies have already created digital twins that represent their material form in binary form. With their Destination Earth project, European scientists are currently mapping the Earth digitally in order to simulate climate change. The triumph of all-encompassing digitalisation, it seems, can no longer be stopped. True to the catchy slogan of a political party from the last parliamentary election campaign: Digitalisation first. Concerns second. However, I doubt whether concerns can be simply wiped from people's minds. After all, the question of how we should deal with technology has preoccupied mankind since the early days of industrialisation at the latest. Unfortunately, the answer to this question leaves little room for nuance. Rather, it divides societies - somewhat woodcut-like - into the camp of the backward-looking, who distance themselves from new technology or even feel threatened by it. Just think of the weavers from the 19th century.
And on the other side, there are apologists for whom every new technology embodies progress and should therefore be welcomed without reservation. In this mindset, technology is seen as sacrosanct, as the right solution for almost all problems. Take the climate crisis, for example, into which we are sliding ever deeper. For many scientists (and for social forces), the best way to solve it is through technological geoengineering. That is pure progress.
A black and white view of the world is hardly ever helpful. Instead, when we look at digitalisation, we should zoom in very wide. After all, technological change is always about the question of how societies want to develop. It should actually be at the top of the agenda. Only then is it a question of what role digital technologies play in this. In this approach, technology would therefore 'only' be a means to an end in order to realise socially desired goals.
A black-and-white view of the world is almost never helpful. Instead, when we look at digitalisation, we should zoom out very far. After all, technological change is always about the question of how societies want to develop. It should actually be at the top of the agenda. Only then is it a question of what role digital technologies play in this. In this approach, technology would therefore 'only' be a means to an end in order to realise socially desired goals.
Thinking first, digitalisation second - that is therefore my personal credo.
Today, the relationship between technology and society has been reversed. Digitalisation is crystallising as an end in itself that can no longer be questioned. Concerns are wiped away, societies have to subordinate themselves to technology and all its implications. If we do not reflect on this process - I would like to point out - we will create and implement technologies that become independent of social goals and result in a kind of steel housing of technology (based on Max Weber's concept of the steel housing of bondage).
Perhaps you are now thinking: What do these philosophically coloured interjections have to do with our business world? If we transfer them to an entrepreneurial context, then we are dealing with similar constellations: Do we run after digitalisation like lemmings or do we assess its benefits for our own business model, for our own markets and for our customers? If there is added value, what needs to be tackled digitally and how can this be combined with the analogue world to create well-functioning hybrid models?
Thinking first, digitalisation second - that's my personal credo. However, it seems to be the case that many companies are doing things differently. Because hardly any company can afford to miss the digitalisation train. So companies initiate projects without being clear about their journey and their destination. The main thing is digital, combined with hyped buzzwords to tell the right narrative. Again, from a philosophical point of view, companies find themselves on the level of a purely instrumental, but not an all-encompassing reason. The dialectic of enlightenment sends its regards.
This truncated rationale - and here we come full circle - affects our entire approach to the digital transformation. If society does not manage to deal with new technologies in a reflective, i.e. enlightened, way, digitalisation will become a dance around the golden calf that dictates the rhythm. Sociologist Harald Welzer puts it in a nutshell: "At the moment, the tail is wagging the dog when it comes to digitalisation. Allowing algorithms to dictate how we should live is a return to self-inflicted immaturity ... A responsible society sees digitalisation not as fate, but as a creative task."
Frank Schabel, strategy consultant and interim manager, has worked for many years in management roles in marketing and corporate communications for renowned B2B companies. His consulting is based on the reality of his clients, not on current management fashions. He does not build cloud-cuckoo houses, but pragmatic paths. www.frankschabel.de