The German journalist and hacker Wau Holland once said: “You don’t have to fight technology, you have to master it.
After returning from the companies in Silicon Valley, Shanghai and Shenzhen, it became clear to me once again how skeptical we are about technology here in Germany and Europe. That is also understandable. We live in security and prosperity and this is largely based on industries that we naturally cling to and keep alive. That’s okay, as is the fear of job losses due to digitalization. But it’s not a solution. Because digitalization is not coming… it’s already here. Deal with it. The question must not be: Will technology affect my business? It should be: How can I actively shape this change?
We are lazy, full, satisfied and feel safe. And if things go badly for us, others will sort it out - the state at the latest. But this is a false sense of security. Apple, Google, Amazon and the like prove every day how quickly things can happen to companies and industries. And the impacts are getting closer. Tesla now has a larger market capitalization than VW, Daimler, BMW, GM and Ford combined and is building its Gigafactory on the outskirts of Berlin. If you travel on and take the ICE west for 1 hour, you might think you are passing an open-air museum.
Whether Tesla or electric cars are any good is debatable. But they are providing impetus. And we should and must actively embrace them instead of putting all our energy into maintaining what we already have.
Silicon Valley has created a well-functioning ecosystem in which tech start-ups and corporations can scale and develop. And you can walk through Shenzhen, the “Silicon Valley of hardware”, where road traffic consists almost exclusively of e-cars and urban planning is supplied with data from the city in real time. But how can we transfer this to Germany and Europe? How can we transfer things that work well without the downsides, such as the self-exploitation of employees or complete surveillance including social scoring?
Adopting individual aspects in isolation doesn’t work or only works by chance: a bit of Scrum here, a table football game there and Casual Friday at the end of the week. People often forget that things are different in our country: our framework conditions, rules, values, social system and our history - so it can’t be adopted 1:1.
A bit of fair-weather agility then leads directly to frustration among employees (“yes, what have they come up with up there again”) and at management level (“can’t they just work efficiently in an agile way”).
In order to continue on “our” path into the digital age and not head towards dystrophies, we need to put a value that has sometimes gone out of fashion back at the center: humanity - in the end, it is always the human being who is the employee or manager, software architect, trainee or senior, supplier, provider or customer. They are the ones that all technology should serve and they are the most important resource in this transformation.
Successful digitalization requires not only technical development, but also the personal development of those involved and their teams. No more shock paralysis. Put your clothes in order, breathe and actively shape the future. Then agile values and an agile mindset will have a chance of not just being empty phrases on the foyer wall, but a lived practice.