While conducting C-level interviews I frequently hear comments akin to, “All this technology stuff is driving me crazy.”
I know the word “crazy” is no longer an acceptable term of art in the mental health profession. But the frequent use of “crazy” on the demand side of the technology world opened my mind to the possibility that there may be value in applying a multifaceted mental health lens to IT endeavors to see what can be gleaned about helping executives find technology and their organization’s technology agendas less psychologically unsettling.
As I juxtaposed developments in the mental health and technology industries, I discovered numerous similarities, notable differences, and surprising intersections.
Every CEO, every executive, and just about every worker in the developed world today “talks” and “walks” information technology. Major portions of the global population are always-on and perpetually plugged-in to a myriad of machines.
Mental health as a point of discussion, awareness, and contemplation is on a similar path to ubiquity. Dr. Stephanie Marcello, AVP of Academics, Integration, and Innovation at Rutgers University, speaking about mental health issues in the workplace during the New Jersey Business & Industry Association’s 2023 Insights and Outlooks summit told attendees, “We can’t not not talk about it. It is oozing out of our pores.”
Shapers of public opinion and behavioral influencers — professional athletes (e.g., Jonathan Phelps, Simone Biles, Serena Williams), celebrities (e.g., Adele, Miley Cyrus, Noelia Voigt Miss USA 2023) and politicians (e.g., Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman) — are now routinely going public with their mental health struggles.
In both industries there is a foundational principle of crafting interventions to help make things better. At the macro-level there is general agreement that things need to and can get better.
Which brings us to one of the big questions facing both industries — how do we make things better? In psychology there is a term of art, rumination, which involves focused attention on the symptoms of mental distress, possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions. In the IT space we ruminate a lot as well — paralysis by analysis.
Both industries struggle with determining when to involve professionals. In the mental health profession self-diagnosing, self-labeling, and DIY remedies have become issues. In the kindergarten to young teen space, we have almost reached the point where it is not normal to be normal (see Allen Frances, Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life).
While there may be over and erroneous self-diagnosis in the mental health arena, most executives are not prone to raise their hands and ask for help in the technology management arena. If Tom Brady, former NFL quarterback, thought by many to be the GOAT, aka Greatest of All Time, can state emphatically, “I’m always open to therapy,” shouldn’t executives wrestling with tech issues be comfortable doing the same?
Every worker in the global economy has a “relationship” with technology. Is that relationship healthy? Is some kind of technology therapy required? Do executives need a technology therapist?
In the $103 trillion assets under management global wealth management market ($1.3 trillion annual revenue) one of the most rapidly growing roles is that of a financial therapist: someone who provides financial coaching and behavioral therapy for individuals grappling with issues impacting their relationship with money.
In the global IT marketplace (~$950 trillion) we need technology therapists.
In her must-read book, The Day Before IT Transformation,award-winning CIO Cheryl Smith, formerly of McKesson, WestJet, and Keyspan, cites the December 2022 report data point by the Consortium for Information & Software Quality that every year IT failures cost $2.41 trillion in the United States. This can be taken as proof positive that many executives and organizations do not have a healthy — that is, value producing — relationship with technology.
Rose George, English journalist, has famously and humorously referred to human elimination as “The Big Necessity.”
In the extra-biological realm, IT has become the Big Necessity. It has become necessary that every human on this planet analyze what their relationship with technology has been, is, and should be.
I am not suggesting we all jump on a couch and start spewing our issues with technology but perhaps informed and candid discussions about those things and practices that need repair is a good place to start.
Read More from This Article: What IT can learn from the mental health movement
Source: News