CIO — To borrow a phrase, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was July 27, 2003, just after 5 a.m., when my wife delivered our identical twin boys. Unfortunately, they arrived far too soon, at just over 24 weeks into her pregnancy, almost four months premature. At less than a pound and a half each, their extreme prematurity prevented their bodies from working properly. Organs hadn’t fully developed (their lungs were paper-thin) and Mother Nature, working on her own schedule, wasn’t due to jump-start the rest of their delicate systems for months.
Enter modern medicine, characterized by a lot of good technology and many talented people.
The sphere of technology encompassing the babies’ everyday existence was intense. Their isolettes (modern-day incubators) were a haphazard arrangement of life-sustaining cords—tubes for feeding, breathing and drawing blood, and wires for heart, lung and blood pressure monitors. Random computerized beeps and heart-stopping alarms shook my wife and me. It was both impressive and overwhelming.
As you might expect, the hospital staff told us that the technology behind all of the medical equipment had made exponential improvements during the past decade. One of the respiratory therapists half-joked that 10 or 15 years ago, if they had called him at home to come in when our boys were delivered, he would have rolled over and gone back to sleep. Given their low weights, there was no technology that could have kept them alive. We had always envisioned what their first Christmas would be like—their due date was Nov. 12—but now it was hard to fathom, watching them writhe under UV lights and a plastic wrap that kept the moisture on their brittle, red skin.
What impressed me more than the high-tech medical devices (and there were many) was how dedicated people made the most of old technology. Our situation depended so much more on the people behind the technology. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in a hospital, at a tire dealership, in a department store or on a factory floor: If you have IT systems (whether in a legacy environment or a leading-edge shop), then you need to make sure that the people using those systems are happy. Happy? Yes, that’s right, happy.
Comfortable with the Old as Well as the New
Granted, the word happy isn’t the most informative word in the English language, especially as it relates to technology and IT workers. But stick with me.
