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Give Your Employees Better Tools

New software tools are often rejected because the humans feel like their jobs are being replaced by computers. Software does math better, faster, and more accurately than humans—that is not debatable. But new tools augment brainpower—not replace it.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

We had a very large yard growing up in Nebraska. For most of my childhood, I remember it taking most of the day to mow the lawn with the (two) push mowers we had which only started after 15 pulls of the cord and lots of cursing by my brothers. I have six brothers; there was always a fight over “trimming” vs. “mowing”—until we got the John Deere riding mower. Then there was an outright war for who got to drive around the lawn vs. trim under the trees.

Better tools often make the actual task enjoyable.

In the lawnmowing example, it wasn’t hard to describe the advantages of the upgrade in tools. That riding mower felt like an amusement park ride and we actually asked for rides on the mower. Nobody had to explain the value of the riding mower to my brothers who could mow the entire yard in half the time while sitting down.


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About Jennifer Matt

Jennifer Matt is the managing editor of WhatTheyThink’s Print Software section as well as President of Web2Print Experts, Inc. a technology-independent print software consulting firm helping printers with web-to-print and print MIS solutions.

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