Excel spreadsheets (along with the Blackberry) were probably the markers of managers in the 2000s. And now, how many of them spend longer on reporting and administrative tasks than they do engaging with their teams? Although there are many technological solutions available, they have not succeeded in reversing the trend, quite the opposite. Sometimes, these solutions have themselves become time-consuming tasks for the modern manager. CRM and ERP are the best examples. To the extent that start-ups like Zapier, whose aim it is to automate IT tasks between heterogeneous systems, are exploding, and rightfully so.
But although automation was a competitive asset in the past, it will quickly become a question of survival for many organisations…
