4 ms·
The big barrier to outsourcing anything has always been information transfer. It's all very well handing a presentation over to a designer, but if they don't kn
by leoedin 9y ago
The big barrier to outsourcing anything has always been information transfer. It's all very well handing a presentation over to a designer, but if they don't know what it should contain then they can't design it. In the end the spec document for the presentation ends up looking almost like the presentation itself.
Likewise, the office typing pool would probably be typing up a manager's hand writing. Ubiquitous typing skills now (at least in theory) should mean that the manager today spends no longer writing their document than they used to, but it comes out of that process already typed.
Ultimately something like MS Office essentially act as captured knowledge. They know how to lay out a presentation to your company standards, so you don't have to. The ideal (although nobody has quite got there yet) is that the tool is so seamless that the user can only spend their time worrying about the important bits - information transfer, in the case of a presentation.
Flight booking tools are now also so easy to use that the overhead for the person actually taking the flight is fairly minimal. That's not to say they couldn't be better, but we're almost at the point where you tell Sky Scanner that you want to travel from A to B on a certain date and it allows you to seamlessly book it. It's taken the place of the administrative assistant, who would still have had to consult you on where and when you wanted to go anyway. (Saying that, having an admin handle flight bookings is still easier than doing it yourself, so we do have some way to come here).
- skybrian 9y agoInformation transfer happens better when you're both in the same room talking. One idea would be to have a designer who is an expert in the presentation software essentially take dictation from the person who wants the presentation done, saving the time needed for a non-expert to fumble around with the software. But I don't know if this would save much time?
- dkarl 9y agoThis strikes me as the answer, too, especially with the PowerPoint example in mind. Working with somebody who is only an expert at communication to get them to communicate on your behalf about a topic you're expert on requires a lot of laborious back and forth, which reduces quality because the subject matter expert spends most of their time trying to make sure that the composer's "improvements" don't accidentally mean something opposite or orthogonal to what is intended. If a manager and a PowerPoint design expert worked together at the same computer, with the manager dictating content and the PowerPoint expert performing the edits and suggesting design improvements, you would get a better end product, but I doubt it would amount to a productivity gain.
- mwcampbell 9y agoCase in point on the subject of information transfer: I prefer to book my own flight, directly with the airline, so I can make sure the "Blind or low vision" checkbox gets checked. Then, maybe, they won't tell me to get in a wheelchair, assuming the correct information gets transferred all the way to the person helping me through the airport.
- gpsx 9y agoI agree with you here and think Microsoft Office does not make us les productive, for the reason you give. It would be nice if the OP actually did some measurements to test his idea or at least the extent to which it is a factor. Maybe he linked to it and I missed it. At the same time, this could be an opportunity. Maybe there is some way tools and workflow could be designed to better allow experts to help. For example, the manager is driving power point and the presentation expert is virtually over his shoulder, waiting to help out where needed. And I am thinking of having a real person as the helper, along with any software assistance built into the program.