Great piece. Another point in support of this case is how many of the very worst tech companies could comfortably have defined themselves publicly as 'for good' up until very recently, and indeed actively did so. The widespread public acceptance of this narrative in which motivation is sufficient justification of virtue certainly has some blame to bear for the mess they played a big part in creating.
One thing I feel is slightly missing though is in the call at the end for 'growing up' - ultimately this isn't only a matter of choice, especially on the part of the organisations involved, but that so much of the funding and support in the 'tech for good' world seems to go towards initial ideas and startups, rather than taking risks on growing more established businesses. That's partly a lack of overall capital available for these ends - which is a hard problem to solve - but also because in the absence of the drive from VC to back 100 startups for a decent period in the hope one becomes a unicorn, the sector defaults to a culture that prefers novelty and dislikes risk. Need some way of balancing against that if theres going to be major growth of the sort of tech orgs we need.
I really love this! I think (3) "Be intentional and incorporate what you learn into the very fabric of the rules of your organisation" gets lost often, and in particular, gets erased by marketing that makes the cycles of learning longer. When companies/orgs create something and there is a lot to learn from it, but the marketing machine of how-amazing-are-we starts turning and I think orgs start really believing their marketing uplift, it cycles back to their own detriment of not really learning from what went wrong. I think there has to be a shift in our culture to demand that case studies, reports, etc contain a clear section of things that went wrong, things that could have been done better, not just "everything was rainbows and butterflies" (I am looking at you - tech conferences). I think transparency helps you continue to be intentional and the ability to incorporate what you have learnt back into your practice.
Great piece. Another point in support of this case is how many of the very worst tech companies could comfortably have defined themselves publicly as 'for good' up until very recently, and indeed actively did so. The widespread public acceptance of this narrative in which motivation is sufficient justification of virtue certainly has some blame to bear for the mess they played a big part in creating.
One thing I feel is slightly missing though is in the call at the end for 'growing up' - ultimately this isn't only a matter of choice, especially on the part of the organisations involved, but that so much of the funding and support in the 'tech for good' world seems to go towards initial ideas and startups, rather than taking risks on growing more established businesses. That's partly a lack of overall capital available for these ends - which is a hard problem to solve - but also because in the absence of the drive from VC to back 100 startups for a decent period in the hope one becomes a unicorn, the sector defaults to a culture that prefers novelty and dislikes risk. Need some way of balancing against that if theres going to be major growth of the sort of tech orgs we need.
I really love this! I think (3) "Be intentional and incorporate what you learn into the very fabric of the rules of your organisation" gets lost often, and in particular, gets erased by marketing that makes the cycles of learning longer. When companies/orgs create something and there is a lot to learn from it, but the marketing machine of how-amazing-are-we starts turning and I think orgs start really believing their marketing uplift, it cycles back to their own detriment of not really learning from what went wrong. I think there has to be a shift in our culture to demand that case studies, reports, etc contain a clear section of things that went wrong, things that could have been done better, not just "everything was rainbows and butterflies" (I am looking at you - tech conferences). I think transparency helps you continue to be intentional and the ability to incorporate what you have learnt back into your practice.