How technology is enabling the humanity of organizations

After my recent opening keynote at the SAP Australia User Group Summit on Leadership in Enterprise Technology, I did a video interview for Inside SAP magazine, shown below.

The full transcript of the interview is available on our new publication CIO of the Future.

In response to a question on the impact of technology on organizational culture I said:

What is more important today than ever before, is not just technology as the enabler, but how technology relates to the humanity of the organization, to the culture of the organization.

I think social media is just one aspect of that. But on a deeper level technology is becoming enmeshed in the humanity in the organization, which was never the case before.

I have written before about how competitive differentiation occurs at the intersection of technology and culture.

This is critical to understand not just in IT strategy, but also in organizational strategy.

Organizations are not a set of business processes, they are primarily people who work not just alongside each other but together.

Technology doesn’t just help create the social enterprise. At its best it enables people to be themselves, to be more human, in how they work with each other and engage with customers and the broader ecosystem around them.

IT as pipes and processes is old and disappearing. The new era is of technology enabling humans and humanity.