The first image I thought of when I read the article "Making staff invaluable: how automation supports workplace excellence" in the Financial Times, goes back a few years and features one of the technological giants that is now indispensable to businesses: the management system, or ERP as it is known.
The Financial Times article succinctly but very accurately describes the role of managers and, more generally, human resources in the digital transition and the adoption and use of automated technology systems and artificial intelligence: "small-scale process automation enables people to make changes on their own, automating more of their day-to-day work," and more importantly, to approach it with openness and interest.
Wanting to summarize the concept expressed in the article even more incisively: if people are active participants, drivers of change, then it can happen smoothly and profitably. Conversely, if they are subjected to it, the results in terms of productivity, innovation, and growth will take a long time to come (or not come at all).
I mentioned ERP systems just above because I have experienced firsthand cases of "smart" and other less so adoption of this type of software in companies.
Those realities in which these were inserted gradually, including through preliminary research and interviews with staff, benefited very quickly from the advantages these systems provide to productivity; those in which one or the other software had been inserted out of the blue, "dropped from above" without the involvement of the direct staff concerned generated a Caporetto: so many resources in terms of energy and money gone up in smoke.
Whether it is a management system or the latest generative artificial intelligence technologies, the process does not change: the more you start with people, the greater the result can be.
Managers, team leaders, and corporate resources who are tasked with leading others play a key role in this process because, by virtue of their position, they have the power to effectively share the goals and benefits of transformation with their teams.
The celebrated "One minute manager" by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson offers practical advice and a profoundly true view on the topic of sharing: whether it is positive feedback, a call for improvement, or even more so, goals to consolidate, be clear and direct with your team is key to the team's achievement of results.
The project carried out by Upskill 4.0 for the company Botteganove is the perfect example of how listening to resources can lead to the resolution of real problems and, above all, bring on board the change not only those at the top of the structure but also the staff. The project for the Vicenza-based ceramics company began with the intention of creating a technological solution to promote the product Botteganove for the end customer and, thanks to listening to the company's internal resources and understanding their real critical issues, it ended with the design of an augmented reality experience to facilitate the commercial activities of the company's retailers. The problem that had in fact emerged from the empathy phase of design thinking was related much more to the activities of the brand's retailers than to the end customers' understanding of the product.
The process of change, especially if it includes technology and impacts people's routines, cannot avoid the risk of failure, however, if this is anticipated by antidotes such as sharing, listening and understanding the probability of failure can be lowered and approached almost to zero.
