The Quiet Death of Curiosity
Curiosity rarely disappears overnight. More often, it fades quietly beneath routine, certainty, and the comforting belief that we've seen it all before.
Read →Technology Has Never Moved Faster. Humans Haven’t Changed At All
The last few decades have been extraordinary.
We’ve gone from dial-up internet to fibre broadband.
From filing cabinets to cloud storage.
From standing in queues at the bank to transferring money with a thumbprint.
And now, we’re told, artificial intelligence is going to change everything.
Again.
Technology has never moved faster.
But humans?
I’m not convinced we’ve changed much at all.
The more time I spend working in technology, the more I realise that technology itself is rarely the difficult part.
People are.
Not because people are awkward.
Not because they are resistant.
Because they are human.
They like certainty.
They trust what they know.
They build habits.
And once something becomes familiar, they’ll hold onto it long after a better alternative exists.
Trust Takes Longer to Build Than Software
A few years ago, I worked with a team that had been given a shiny new system.
The old process was clunky.
The new process was faster, more accurate, and integrated properly with the rest of the business.
Everyone agreed it was an improvement.
Six months later, one person was still printing reports.
They’d highlight rows with a pen, they’d make notes in the margins then type the information back into Excel.
At first, I couldn’t understand it.
Why ignore all this technology?
But then I realised something.
It wasn’t about efficiency.
It was about trust.
That printed report and that faded yellow highlighter were familiar.
The new system hadn’t earned their confidence yet.
And trust takes longer to build than software.
The Comfort Blanket Spreadsheet
I’ve seen businesses spend eye-watering sums replacing systems.
Months of planning.
Endless workshops.
Training sessions.
Consultants.
Go-live weekends fuelled by coffee and nervous optimism.
Only for people to recreate the exact same spreadsheets they used before.
Not because the new system was bad.
Because the spreadsheet wasn’t just a spreadsheet.
It was a comfort blanket.
It contained years of little adjustments.
Hidden formulas.
“Temporary” workarounds.
It reflected how people actually worked.
Technology changed.
Human behaviour didn’t.
The AI Question Nobody Asks
Even now, in the middle of the AI boom, I see the same pattern repeating.
The conversation is always about capability.
- Can AI write documents?
- Can it analyse data?
- Can it replace jobs?
- Can it automate this or optimise that?
They’re interesting questions.
But I think a more important question is:
Will people trust it?
Because history suggests we don’t adopt technology when it’s technically ready.
We adopt it when we’re emotionally ready.
Familiarity Beats Functionality
Email didn’t replace meetings.
Instant messaging didn’t kill email.
The paperless office somehow still has three printers per floor.
And despite decades of technological progress, one of the most powerful tools in business remains the humble spreadsheet.
Sometimes lovingly crafted.
Sometimes terrifying.
Usually named something like:
FINAL_REPORT_v7_UPDATED_USE_THIS_ONE.xlsx
We’ve all seen it.
The file nobody dares touch.
The one with macros that haven’t worked properly since 2018.
The one only Karen understands.
The one that quietly keeps a critical business process alive.
It’s absurd.
It’s fragile.
And yet, somehow, people trust it more than the expensive system sat right beside it.
Not because humans are irrational.
Because humans value familiarity.
The Mistake I’ve Made Myself
I’ve made this mistake myself.
I’ve built reports I thought were perfect.
Automated processes I thought people would love.
Introduced tools that, on paper, solved the problem beautifully.
Only to discover I’d forgotten the most important part.
The people using them.
I’d explained what changed.
I hadn’t explained why it mattered.
I’d optimised the process.
I hadn’t built confidence.
Technology is logical.
People aren’t.
And thank goodness for that.
Gloriously, Frustratingly Human
Because the same human traits that frustrate us are the ones that make workplaces work.
- Trust
- Curiosity
- Empathy
- Experience
- The willingness to teach
- The patience to learn
No piece of software replaces those.
At least not yet.
Final Thought
I don’t think the future belongs to the businesses with the newest technology.
Or the biggest AI budget.
Or the fanciest dashboards.
I think it belongs to the businesses that understand people.
The ones that know change is emotional before it’s technical.
That trust is earned.
That training matters.
And that sometimes the hardest part of transformation isn’t installing the new system.
It’s convincing someone they no longer need that spreadsheet they’ve lovingly maintained for fifteen years.
Technology may continue to evolve at breathtaking speed.
But humans?
We’ll probably continue being gloriously, frustratingly human.
And perhaps that’s not a problem to solve.
Perhaps it’s the reason all this technology exists in the first place.
Related posts
Your Business Already Has Automation, They're Called Bob
Most businesses do not realise how much of their operation depends on undocumented human processes until the person holding it together goes on holiday.
Read →Small Systems Are a Leadership Skill
Leadership isn’t only visible in large programmes and budgets. The ability to design and maintain small, stable systems close to real work is often the clearer test of operational maturity.
Read →