Published on the 28/07/2016 | Written by Hayden McCall

Technology is the handle on the door of opportunity, Sampson said, in explaining why he hates the phrase “you first need to capture your business requirements” from your friendly ‘technology agnostic’ advisor.

That’s flawed thinking, said Sampson: “How can you think about requirements without knowing what is possible with the technology?”

While it runs contrary to common practise, he’s seen time and again how organisations have bought into the latest technology – then left users to discover new ways of do things. It can be very successful and result in fundamental change. But it can also result in clutter, confusion and chaos.

Sampson is keynote speaker at the upcoming Digital Workplace Conference in Auckland on August 9-10^th, where he’s going to be presenting on change management for digital transformation.

The introduction of new tools will often transform the way individuals work. Sampson cited the example of collaborative project software. By allowing for communication across siloes, users are faced with prompts that effectively say “you really should be talking to this person”, and the resulting realisation that “we’re in this together” most often translates to project success.

The difference between success and failure, he said, is leadership that recognises the opportunity to shift the pillars of the business to take advantage of changed practises. This might, for example, mean that freelancers can be engaged much more effectively to deliver certain types of work, or new markets can be opened without needing sales offices. When embraced, barriers come down and new business models can form.

In this way, new technology can prompt new work practices that impact on organisational structures right through to transforming the culture of a business.

In other words, it can be powerful stuff.

Sure, he’s talking about collaborative software that by definition has a generic set of requirements. The approach won’t always work with core systems that need more deliberate configuration or development to deliver specific business requirements. But Sampson said these projects will also be better delivered when a collaborative culture is embraced. In other words, there’s something in this for everyone.

Re-imagining work is what Sampson has built a career on, and he’s a believer in the democratisation of technology driving change from the bottom up.

The topic is something he’s spent some time thinking about, both in direct consulting engagements, and in writing several books – 7 in fact. In the latest, he’s taken a deep dive into the world of Microsoft’s desktop software with Re-imagining productive work with Office 365.

Clearly, he’s not afraid to align his ideals with a specific vendor – his previous title was Doing business with IBM Connections 4.5.

This time round, he’s hitched his wagon to a piece of software that, if Satya Nadella has his way, will almost certainly boot up on a device near you.