Thursday, March 11, 2010

Using a hammer to paint the wall (part 1)

It doesn’t make sense, does it? Using a hammer to paint a wall? No, it doesn’t, because we know what a hammer looks like and we all know what it takes to paint a wall.

Similarly, we don’t run out buying a PC to know what 2 times 2 is, we don’t spend twice our yearly income for a software application that would fill out our tax papers for us, we don’t buy a mechanical crane in order to drill a small hole in the wall. And so on, and so on. You get the point…

This is the first part of a series on using tools to solve problems in real-life, especially in organizations.

The point is that human beings seem to have an obsession for tools, especially ICT tools (hardware, software). And somehow, during the development or implementation of the tool, we seem to lose sight of the reason why it is there. The development or implementation becomes the new goal, rather than the underlying reasons for selecting the tool in the first place.

More about this topic later...

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