Click HERE to read January's Cover Story: "What message are you sending?"
To buttress Golf Course Industry’s January coverage generational issues in the golf business, I’m subbing this month for my boss, Bob Lohmann. Why? Because I’m the generationally significant choice. As a senior project architect, ASGCA Associate and Generation Xer, I often find myself serving as the link — in our office and with our various design/construction clients — between Baby Boomers like Bob and guys in their 20s.
If there is one overriding subject of disconnect between these generations, it’s technology. I’m no tech wiz, but I’m 38 years old and it seems I’m poised directly between an older generation that is quite wary, even dismissive of what technology can do for golf industry professionals, and the younger generation, which thinks technology is the answer to everything.
These are generalizations, of course, and neither group is 100 percent correct. But it is an issue, and we spend a lot of time in the offices of Lohmann Golf Designs and Golf Creations working to strike the right balance between what technology allows us to do, and how we should do things.
Next month I’m giving a presentation to a group of assistant superintendents in Wisconsin. My message to these “head superintendents of the future” is that golf remains a service industry. Face time isn’t just a bonus — it’s vital to decision-making, problem-solving, and innovating. It’s something that cannot be replaced by technology.
Of course, only a fool would choose NOT to leverage the available technology to produce the best possible outcomes and ease his/her workload. It’s all about balance and rhythm, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that these two factors also happen to be the most important aspects of the golf swing.
I’m not going to walk you through the entire presentation I’ve prepared for the assistant supers. But the talk’s theme, “Is There an App for That?”, backs the idea that while it would be nice if there was an app to address each issue confronted by supers in their day-to-day existence, there isn’t an app for everything. Very few things actually.
The point is that service is an app — there is inherent value to the personal contact and traditional approaches architects, contractors and superintendents have long brought to their decision-making, problem-solving and innovation. Not everything can be solved into submission by technological advance.
Indeed, it’s the personal interaction that leads to real problem-solving, to advances in their own right. Take a look at this video presentation from Steven Johnson. It’s only 4 minutes long and his point really grabbed me — that new ideas and problem-solving are the function of collaboration, and the trick is creating “environments of innovation” — atmospheres and modes of interaction that foster these meaningful results.
Naturally, these environments were created for thousands of years exclusively through personal interaction. Today, we communicate via Skype, and email, and dozens of other media, all valuable time-saving tools but void of direct contact. Where’s the balance? How do we find and achieve it?
This is Bob’s column so I’m going to use him as both source and guinea pig. I asked him about how technology has changed the way we architects function. His answers illustrate how technology, in helping us do certain things, has both moved us away from the environment of innovation and allowed us to create that environment more easily.
Bob’s answers are divided into Pros and Cons. First, the Pros:
Efficiency: “It has increased tremendously,” Bob says. “Twenty years ago I employed as many as five architects to handle what one or two are doing today, in terms of drawing and document output.”
Communication: “I remember the days when I had to pull over at rest stops to call in and check phone messages. Getting a response to a simple question could take several days.” Today if you don’t reply instantly, it’s a national crisis.
Digital outputs: Standard communication — distributing plans, proposals, reports, etc. — used to take days via mail or UPS (or was transmitted with poor quality via fax). Today, delivery is instantaneous. Quality and accuracy is spot on (assuming proper data input!). Both factors dramatically shorten project timeframes and turnaround.
Data collection: “Way back when, it took at least two guys multiple hours and sometimes days to gather survey data on site. Now, with GPS, it can be achieved by one person in a couple of hours and analyzed instantly.”
Drawing, corrections, scaling: All of this took days of hand labor and even more days to revise. Today CAD models work in real time and changes to plans are translated to all related documents simultaneously. “They used to have a monstrosity of a machine just to translate a document from one scale to another. It took hours. Now it’s the click of a mouse.”
File archiving: We have an entire room in our main office dedicated to housing all of our pre-2000 work. We have a 10-square-foot space that houses everything since then, in digital format.
Now the Cons:
Constant training and re-training: “By the time you learn a certain technology or program, the next faster, better, must-have program is coming out.”
Crap in. Crap out: The input is instant, the output is instant, which leaves very little time to allow concepts/ideas to soak in or marinate. “The mere fact that hand-drawing required a lot of time allowed for a much longer review period, more time for an idea to mature, more time for new ideas to germinate.”
Over offer, under value: “Interestingly, the drawn product that we used to produce is really no different than what we produce today — we just produce it faster.” However, because things used to take more time, we charged greater fees (at least relative to the time period). The product has been somewhat devalued because it is perceived as being easier to produce and value has dropped relative to that perception in some cases.
Distraction: Be honest, how much time in the current work day is spent surfing, emailing, etc.?
Personal touch: This might be the most meaningful downside. All the technological advancements have made it much easier to do everything from the office or behind a phone. The face time, the personal touch, the long-term relationship building has really suffered.
I agree with Bob that we might be more distracted, but we are also literally always working. We may leave the office, but the phone/email comes with us and the office distracts us continually in what were traditionally off-hours.
The trick is balancing innovation with a genuine desire to still connect on a personal level. Technology is merely a means to achieve that connection. I actually think Bob is a model for how older golf industry professionals have integrated technology while recognizing that personal connections must be preserved. Part of my message of the assistant supers next month will be, “Be sure you are meeting those Baby Boomers halfway.”
