Blocker or Enabler?

I was printing off some documents for a meeting the other day when I realised that yes, technology is a fantastic enabler, but it can also be a devastating blocker.

Why did I think this whilst printing out a document? Oddly it was because the printer was making me late for a meeting. Erm, actually, let me re-phrase that: my dependance on technology had made me late for a meeting, no actually, let me try again: my process for ensuring a successful meeting failed because it did not allow for the technology not quite working according to plan.

By this stage you may be wondering what I'm going on about. I needed a presentation printed out, I printed it a few minutes before the meeting expecting the colour laser printer to spit it out in a few seconds and I'd be at my meeting in time. Instead, firstly it ran out of paper, secondly it decided to re-calibrate half way through and then near the end it decided to clean itself. In the end I was 10 minutes late for the meeting. My expectations of technology had led me to be late for the meeting, I needed the print out to do the meeting. Fortunately my team waited patiently for me and I cursed the technology rather than my lack of organisational skills.

Then I thought about this in a larger context. How often do we have expectations of technology far in excess of it's capability and we end up with technology blocking rather than enabling. Is the NHS National Programme for IT a case in point - an assumption that technology was the answer and therefore used to solve a problem that wasn't actually, at its core, a technology issue thus ending up with technology being a blocker to successfully resolving the problem.

So, the question is how often in today's business arena is technology seen as the panacea when the problem should be looked at as a business issue of which the use of technology is just a part rather than the whole solution. When technology is the seen as the panacea, it becomes a blocker to solving the problem and can waste many millions. We as the people running technology in a company must ensure that the company we work for understand this and we help them use technology as an enabler, not a blocker.