Technology has created a complexity problem

Technology created the complexity problem... but coupled with intelligent distillation of information and innovative visual story telling, it can also solve the problem.

Technology has enabled us to create much more powerful systems – and therefore a more complex world. It has allowed people to bring together diverse teams, use virtual working and assemble systems that could barely have been imagined twenty years ago. This explains why there are so many more virtual problems and solutions. Often this complexity is hidden from users (Think of Google – and despite the complexity behind the scenes, the simplicity we all see on the home page) – but often you need to interface with complexity – which means you need to understand it.

The logical conclusion to all this is that we should all use technology to solve the complexity problem. Almost free, instant access from anywhere in the world (with Internet) is very appealing.  But simply layering on more technology is not always the solution, or not *all* of the solution, anyway.

Video can be hugely powerful. Especially for conveying emotion and sharing experience.  But it's still linear and it’s not a very wide “pipe” to get information through.

Even a huge projector has a low resolution - comparable to an A6 piece of paper. This restriction means that, communicating on-screen in a linear (start to finish) fashion, you have to resort to spoon feeding information piece by piece – losing the context for the person that you're "doing it" to (they never know when it's going to get interesting, or if it might never get interesting! This applies to a typical video, powerpoint deck / slide show etc...

Spending countless hours in meetings is expensive – especially when it is not productive and doesn't result in the way you'd hoped (like, in a Sale). So how do you make the most of this time and ensure you are cutting through the complexity that we've all created?

We still need to spend time together in the real world – but with tools to make that time more effective, both before we meet, when we meet, and after. If you are “cascading a message” then you are basically training and equipping people to explain, train and equip the next people in the chain. Done right you get powerful face-face communication – done badly you end up with Chinese whispers or worse.