Knowing How and Knowing What in tech

In technology, there are as with some other fields there are those who know ‘how’ to do things and those who know ‘what’ to do. These two groups are mutually dependent and definitely not mutually exclusive, however those who know the ‘What’ as opposed to the ‘how’ are rarer.

The know-hows are typically specialists who can do any given task in their field of expertise, these included programmers web developers, app developers and most of the people who come out of engineering and computer science schools.

On the other hand the know-whats are those with a broad knowledge of technology, they  may or may not specialise in a particular field but they know about a wide enough range of  technology established and emerging. This gives them a key quality; while the know-hows will usually know all the right answers, the know-whats will know the right questions to ask.

Technology changes faster and faster, Dave Evans at Cisco Systems even went on to say that 95% of the sum of human knowledge in the next 50 years will be discovered in the next 50 years. In other words all the  human knowledge today will account for only 5% of human knowledge in 50 years time.  A sizeable part of what a telecommunications engineering student learns in his 2nd year of study  is obsolete by the time he graduates.

What this means for businesses; Staying flexible is essential, keeping aware of trends in technology, watching for emerging opportunities in the tech developments and investing in understanding technology or staff that understands and keeps track of these changes in technology can reduce costs while raising profits and potentially create new areas of income.

An example on cutting costs;  a lot of companies in Uganda today pay millions of shillings to IT firms to develop for them websites, the firm will a month later provide them with a website that they will say is high quality, but in truth the website could have been done overnight by an intern. There are even examples of government websites which could have been done during an interns lunch break(examples on request). But since the companies do not know what  to ask for in a website they spend millions of shillings on a product worth at most a couple of thousand shillings. Knowing what to ask for, will save you  money.

Embracing new technology will also also help do one of the things tech does best, connecting people. Tech created the global village, adopt technology and become visible to potential partners world over, connect with people in your field world over. Adopting new technology whether in the form of internet technologies or production methods will likely put you in contact with and make you visible to potential partners, customers and employees. In acquiring technology the people involved in the supply chain will often know a lot of other players in your field.

Uganda faces a special problem, along with all the much publicised issues comes the issue of lack of flexibility in the minds of policy makers, we have a situation where people stop learning as soon as they are done with school, in some fields this might be good enough but in technology it isn’t. Technology requires agile minds to keep up with it. Shortage of which may lead to a nation becoming a dumping ground for recently obsolete technology that no one else is willing to pay for, but we'll pay for it, simply because we don't know any better.

To most non-tech savy people there isn't so much to tech, they believe you've seen one engineer you've seen them all. But truth is engineers and IT specialists are a very diverse group with differing talents. One problem we face is that ‘you don't know what you don’t know’ so we are prone to overestimate what we do know. If the last time you learnt something new about any topic in technology is more than 2 years ago, chances are your knowledge is already obsolete.

So next time you are hiring or outsourcing  for an IT related job it might be wise to ensure you have someone who knows what questions to ask because thats the person you need to have first and then that person  will know who you should hire and how much you should pay for a given job.

General rule of thumb, ‘If  embracing technology is costing you more than its earning, you are doing it wrong!!’