Next Revolution in Interaction

The mckinsey article is very poignant. It argues how the work is shifting away from simple transactional and transformational ones to Tacit ones, and it suggests, the businesses should shift IT dollars from improving transaction/transformational work to improving tacit work. The work done by this tacit workforce is dynamic, and is based on interactions. The tacit work is not repetitive but varies with situation. Due to this variation, a relationship develops with the customer, leading to better customer retention. The IT tools we have created to help transaction/transformational workforce may not work for the tacit workforce.

The tools required by this new workforce should be loosely coupled and agile. The current IT tools, end up creating hardcoded solutions. This is because the current software development paradigm, expects the solution to be defined upfront. But businesses are increasingly demanding tacit work, were the solution is situation dependent. In response to this need, new methodology like XP or agile are proposed. A new methodology has also the same problem, as the program that gets created gets complex over time. How can we support this new work force with the same old lines of thinking? We need to take a fresh look at technology and see how we can address these tacit workers with technology that complements them. I.e technology that improves tacit work productivity without getting in thier way.

I believe, to meet this business demand, we have to view IT from INTERACTION point of view rather than ALGORITHMIC point of vew.

Are we ready for this change?