Beware of “cultural turnstile” in technology projects

It was a quiet summer afternoon when, lost in my thoughts, I was walking to the bus station. I noticed the company had implemented a system of magnetic cards instead of regular paper tickets, what was quite interesting. But I also thought to myself that some problems would occur with the passengers accustomed for many years to use the old tickets, and it happened.

The boarding was quick, but the landing was a real mess. Every time someone wanted to get off the bus, an uncountable set of problems occurred related to non-reading cards, locked turnstile hitting the passenger's leg, etc. Because of that, there were a lot of people unhappy with the delay (and the bad words during each unsuccessful attempt to exit the vehicle).

After almost half an hour late, when we stopped in the first city, the explosion happened. A total locking in the turnstile didn’t allow anyone to exit and, among general dissatisfaction and complaints, I thought “What a perfect day to be without my car."

Suddenly, perhaps moved by the impatience or fear of that unpleasant situation, a woman tried to jump the turnstile to exit and fell down. Apparently, no serious injury happened (except to her pride), but the scene was enough to incite a general uprising against the company (some more exalted suggested burning the bus).

I was considering using the emergency exits when a bus company’s employee managed to release the turnstile and the crowd went away. After that, the journey continued with the same problems and complaints, but a little safer.

Very often we don’t pay attention to people’s limits and create situations they are not able to manner. It is not unusual companies investing large sums in technology and forgetting that the users who must deal with this technology are not adequately trained to it, that they have no culture for it.

Not taking into account the cultural level of the stakeholders, and neglecting the necessary actions to mitigate it, is a big mistake that often causes problems and even destroys some good projects. In this situation, what usually happens is technology’s misuse or boycott.

Thus, if users are employees, maybe the company just loses its time and money, besides getting some organizational problems. But if they’re customers, the damage is greater because the money could end up going away.

In the case of this bus company, I believe nothing will happen because it is the only one that operates in this route, so customers have no options. However, in a normal free competition environment, it could be fatal for the organization.

Finally, despite some moments of fear, it was a good experience because, although I usually defend organizational culture actions related to the projects of technology, I’d never felt so close to me the results of a wrong decision on this subject (although in this case I was the customer).

Unfortunately, I’m sure the company hasn’t learnt anything from it, except for the poor driver who, so scared and not knowing what to do in that chaos, might have seriously considered changing his profession.