Commentary: Beware of the ‘anti-Google Maps guy’

There are invariably roadblocks to logistics technology adoption, and often it’s someone internally who considers their experience more valuable than what a system advises them to do.    Is there an “anti-Google Maps guy” blocking the way to technology usage or investment at your company?
   Confused? Let me explain a little bit. I recently rode in a car on the insanely crowded streets of New Delhi, India. There are too many cars, too many motorcycles, too many scooters, too many three-wheeler taxis, too many animals and not enough street signs. It looks like utter chaos to the untrained eye.
   It can be close to impossible to find the name of the street you’re traveling on, but locals get by through their knowledge of landmarks (turn left at this building, turn right at that market, etc.). Over time, drivers develop habitual routes based on those landmarks.
   Well, Google Maps has completely changed the way drivers can navigate the streets of Delhi, if they choose to. Like everywhere else, it shows the route of least resistance, even if that route is longer in distance and (relevant to my point) unfamiliar to the driver. The impact, I would argue, is even greater than in other parts of the world because it allows those not familiar with the city to more effectively navigate their way through a very confusing environment.
   On my recent car ride, a fellow passenger used Google Maps to find one of these longer, more unfamiliar routes that avoided virtually any major traffic. The driver, however, had lived in Delhi for three decades. No phone was telling him a better way to navigate his city.
   So we drove his way and inevitably waited in traffic, arriving 22 minutes later than Google predicted we would have if we took its suggested route. I immediately thought about how this scenario might present itself at companies that are in the midst of either implementing technology or thinking about doing so.
   To me, this adoption of technology is all about the eye test. The driver of the car was thinking “my eyes know which way to get from here to there” even as technology was telling him to ignore what he previously knew and think of a different way.
   This is the crux of what technology in logistics (and not just emergent models, but even established ones) does. It tests our ability to trust the unseen. A traffic manager might bristle when told to tender a shipment on carrier X for lane Y, even as a transportation management system (TMS) tells the manager that is the best rate/service combination available for that load.
    Let me be clear. Many companies have zero trouble trusting the technology. I spoke yesterday to a shipper who sheepishly admitted to commencing use of a TMS a year ago despite the enormity of his company’s freight spend and complexity of its distribution network. This shipper was ready to trust the system from day one.
   But many companies face internal blocks – not a cranky IT department or executives unwilling to invest. These internal blocks are situations where the weight of experience outpaces a readiness for change. It takes a humble logistics veteran to allow a system to tell him or her how to do something better than they’ve been doing for decades.
   But then, the driver in Delhi thought he knew better too.
   Take this lesson for what it’s worth, but do recognize this: technology is undeniably changing the way we do everything in our lives, so why wouldn’t we expect those divergent experiences to creep into our work processes?
   If you have a “anti-Google Maps guy” blocking your path to technology adoption, make sure he doesn’t block it permanently. Find a different path and you’ll get to where you need to go 22 minutes earlier anyway.