Seven deadly sins of digital technology implementation

From People Tech Maritime Bergen - Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth all obstruct maritime digital technology implementations, said consultant Lars Solbakken. Humility, generosity, patience, and diligence can be very useful

 The “seven deadly sins” of pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth, as taught by the Christian church, all get in the way of good digital technology implementations, said consultant Lars Solbakken, speaking at People Tech Maritime event in Bergen in November.

The opposites, such as humility, generosity, patience, and diligence, can take us a long way.

Mr Solbakken is former CIO of shipping company DOF (2021-2025) and currently on the board of maritime ICT company Globetech and Managing Partner for Vaag Consulting.

The smartest tool the maritime industry has, at least for now, is still the hundreds of years of human experience we have in maritime operations, he said. People are much “smarter” than today’s digital technology, which has had only decades of development in comparison.

But our maritime operations are best when we have people, technology and organisation working together.

This means that the biggest challenge organisations face is probably not choosing which tool to use, but how to make whatever tool you choose work together with your people and organisation. This makes digitalisation fundamentally a leadership and organisational challenge, rather than an IT challenge, he said.

Pride

Pride, “the most fundamental sin,” obstructs digital technology implementations when people feel that they alone know best. “It’s good to have pride in your work but you are not the captain of the entire world,” he said.

“Digitalisation is a team sport. Unless you keep that in mind, you will fail. You have to learn, you have to understand, you have to challenge each other, utilise the experience that other people have. Pride is where digitalisation usually crashes first.”

Greed

Greed affects digital technology implementations when people refuse to share their data. “It could be out of habit, out of fear, it could be a power play, ‘I am not sharing my data because that's what makes me shine’”.

“Hoarded data is wasted treasure. Data only creates value when it is shared across the organisation technically and culturally,” he said.

Digital maturity is fuelled by generosity, the opposite of greed.

Lust

Lust obstructs digital technology implementations when people seek out shiny digital tools. They see a demo for a new software tool and want to own it, rather than thinking about how to make what they already have work properly.

“For me, lust is like doing digitalisation without discipline,” he said.

“We buy solutions, we test them out, we don't understand the real problem. Why we are here, what we are supposed to do. We are running for the next big thing.”

In contrast, “digital maturity means resisting the temptation and investing in the technology that solves your problem. You've got to know what your problem is, as well.”

Envy

Envy obstructs digital technology implementations when we want the digital tools other people are using. We imagine if we had their tools we can be as successful as they are, rather than considering if it fits what our company needs, and what effort is involved in implementing it.

“You cannot copy digital success from others. You can [only] get inspiration,” he said.

“Envy distracts us from the real task, understanding our needs and designing for our reality.”

Successful digitalisation projects will be based on your company’s own data, made with your company’s expertise, for your company’s staff, designed to meet your company’s goals, he said.

Gluttony

Gluttony applies when we digitally “overeat,” getting more data than we can work with. “It is so easy to collect that data, we feed the systems with massive amounts of data. But it is low quality, we don't know the context of that data. So, we choke the system. Lots of data is very seldom good.”

“The system struggles, we don’t get the result, people get frustrated.”

Wrath

We see wrath when digitalisation doesn’t turn out as expected and we look for someone to blame.

“It happens a lot,” he said. “We blame the system, we blame the vendor, we blame IT, we say ‘let's go back to do it the old way.’”

“People don't necessarily have patience to get results. Integrated systems aren’t built overnight.”

The IT department’s capability is limited to investigating and choosing technology and then supporting the system, he said. A system can only work if the entire organisation adopts it.

Sloth

We see sloth when people think that the digitalisation job is done and they can relax. “We still have to do the boring parts, the foundational parts.”

For example, maintaining digital infrastructure, cybersecurity and data quality.

“We have to make human technology and organizations work together. We have to build competence, because it is complex. Whatever that nirvana is for you, you have to build it step by step.”

Lack of leadership support

A lack of leadership alignment and ownership is a root cause behind several of the seven sins, Solbakken said. Companies whose leadership neither understands nor believes in technology “will not be here in the very near future.”

Digitalisation cannot be delegated or driven bottom-up alone, he added. It requires active leadership engagement, clear priorities, and sustained commitment from the top.

Virtues

All of these seven sins have opposite virtues, such as humility, generosity, patience, and diligence.

We can respect each other’s expertise, share data to the benefit of the whole organisation and its partners, choose technology for its value not its shine, choose solid solutions based on our needs, have clean, contextualised meaningful data, give systems and people time to mature, and carefully climb the full digitalisation staircase.

“Generosity” doesn’t necessarily mean sharing all of your data. No company would share their daily chartering rates externally, for example. But “the problem now is that they are not even shared within the company.”

“The more trust you have in each other, the better you communicate, the more aligned you are, the closer you are to the virtues,” he said.

If you do all this, “there's a fair chance that you move from fragmented projects to integrated operations and get that ROI everybody is dreaming about. These virtues are not cultural ideals, but practical prerequisites for scalable, resilient, and profitable digital operations.”

It also means that “places like Norway can be a good part of the competitive maritime landscape.”