I don’t know about you, but early on in my career I would see every problem through a technical lens. There was The Right Way™ and The Wrong Way™. There was no such thing as a big picture, there were no nuances. Life was black and white.

When a customer would describe a problem to me, I was already doing a mental triage based on keywords that were coming up in the conversation. This was all happening before they had even finished explaining what issues they wanted me to address!

The problem with this approach is that it’s very one-dimensional. You get very little context or perspective.

Fortunately, business school as well as more experience helped open my eyes to a broader perspective. Instead of seeing a business as only a list of technical issues, there is often a much larger picture to consider.

It’s a very human thing to want your work to be meaningful, of course, and to make an impact. I used to think this was not possible in my line of work. But as technical consultants, there’s a lot we can offer companies beyond the obvious technical solutions.

Let’s suppose that a customer asks you to assist with a large consolidation of staff? Perhaps they’ve lost a large source of revenue and now face the possibility of stopping operations completely. You are brought in to help address some technical issues they face. Do you simply look at the technical issues the customer is asking about, and nothing more?

The easy path of course is to simply look at the technical requirements and nothing more. Perform your work based on only the raw technical requests given to you by the customer and move on.

Instead, consider the broader impact you would have after working to understand their core line of business and really appreciating how technology fits into their operation. If you read between the lines, you can address problems that they may not know they have. Or perhaps they’re aware of the issues but haven’t been willing or able to address them up to this point?

By working to understand the larger picture, specifically how technology can speak to your client’s problems, you have the potential to offer them a more valuable service.

For example, there is the potential for job loss in the scenario I described earlier. What if your work, your technical solutions, could minimize that job loss for your client? There’s an opportunity for your work to have deep and direct meaning in the life of someone else.

This is how Long View Bits strives to work. We bring the human element into our work and into your business. We work to understand the larger picture of your business, how technology fits into it, and how we can make a difference in your business!