As featured in the Sunday Economic Times of 22.12.2013 (Page 10). Complete article appears after the image:
If I told you that learning to play cricket in India was impossible, you would laugh at me. So, if I told you that the President of the United States of America was not able to build a critical website to serve his citizens, then would you believe me?
Along with you, no one; not a single mammal on the planet can believe that the President of the land that gave us Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft has failed in his attempt to build the government’s Insurance website healthcare.gov .
Just look up “What went wrong with Obama’s Health Care website” and you will have enough reading material to last you three life imprisonment terms. Since its launch in October, the website has crashed, been inaccessible to American users, has spewed out erroneous information, has wasted millions of hours of people’s time and has frustrated the common American. Worse, it has appeared like a guillotine for Obama’s greatest contribution in his Presidency – Obamacare – that was supposed to completely resurrect the way Americans were promised medical aid as citizens.
We are not Americans and Obamacare or healthcare.gov does not apply to us. However, the lessons learnt from this fiasco promise some incredible learnings for anyone in a leadership position who has been entrusted to deliver a technology solution to help consumers. Some of these lessons are:
1. You can’t outsource being the bridegroom.
Can you imagine asking someone else to represent you at your own wedding? Well, that is what Obama did, metaphorically. He was so ‘hands off’ the most important consumer-impacting project of his career that he has now plummeted to the bottom of his popularity.
If you are in charge of a business that is going to be transformed by technology, then get involved. Roll up your sleeves, imagine that you are the consumer, touch and feel the project yourself. Honestly, technology is not intimidating if you think of it as a tool towards achieving your goals rather than the goal itself.
One of the greatest examples of a “non-tech” CEO rolling out some of the most complex pieces of hardware and software is Steve Jobs. Even though he was not an engineer, Apple’s performance of its iPods, iPhones and iPads sold to millions of users, remains flawless.
Steve Jobs managed to deliver because he pretended to be the consumer – not the CEO. He tested, tested and tested his products with so much rigour that they turned out to be perfect. A famous example – he cancelled the launch of the first iPhone just a few weeks before the D-Day because the glass of the test iPhone he was carrying in his pocket had been badly scratched by his keys (in the same pocket). He said, “This is how Americans carry their phones and keys and this is not what I want the iPhone to look like”. The fix created ‘Gorilla Glass’ by Corning Company that is now used everywhere!
2. Beta is the new Gold
Most CEOs can’t accept things to be ‘in trial’ for a long time. They want it be ‘commercial’ and rolled out.
Unfortunately, technology can’t seem to get it right in the first few attempts. It always needs to be tuned and further fine-tuned to begin to sing a tune. No wonder why the mighty Google labels many of its projects ‘beta’ even though they are a few years old!
Obama could have vastly benefited if he had limited the exposure of the site, tested it thoroughly with only a few users (a couple of states?) and then slowly, but surely, rolled out the site across national level.
If you are instrumenting technology that will change the way your consumers transact with your Company and its business, then do so slowly. There is no heroism in doing everything together. Remember that the tortoise won the race.
3. Don’t treat advisors as fathers-in-law
I say this assuming that most people don’t listen to their fathers-in-law despite having them around. Obama is the President of a nation that put the first man on the moon and delivered the first driverless car. Why did he not consult and employ the world’s greatest technology entrepreneurs to help build his insurance website?
Many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have loudly complained that Obama didn’t involve them in the healthcare.gov site despite them making many overtures to help. I mean, imagine folks from Amazon and Ebay on his side! How could he have failed?
Highly accomplished, pro-bono advisors are irritating because they are usually right and say things you don’t want to hear. Their advice is painful because it means changing a lot of what has already been decided and implemented.
If you are a business leader, take advice before you start. The world has become extremely specialized and you will never know everything about everything. If an expert is willing to help for free, send your ego to the dry cleaners and sit down with him.
4. Don’t get plumbers to write your code.
The Obama website has been terribly handled by both the contractors involved and also the government officials handling the project. The entire project is messed because of bad planning, untimely feedback, multiple changes and horrific decision-making.
Technology is a dragon that needs a special kind of rider to tame it. Don’t put in familiar faces and people you “have known for a while” because they are not used to riding dragons. They will get eaten up.
As a business leader, find a twin of yourself who speaks your language, looks you in the eye and tells you the truth. Then put him in charge of your mission critical technology projects.
Steve Jobs was so obsessed by details that he even designed the interiors of the buses that transported Apple employees from train stations to office. Some called him mad but I think Obama would have another view.
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