Soft. It's the New Hard

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In his review of my latest book, Thomas Duff wrote that I stayed “firmly on the ‘soft-skill’ ground”. That got me thinking about the commonly accepted labels that we put on things.

If it’s a product, or it’s hardware, then we’re told to call it “hard”, maybe because the product feels hard when you touch it. If it’s to do with the business and people aspects, then the commonly accepted label for that is the “soft stuff”. Perhaps that’s because human flesh is soft to the touch, the business benefits are not always tangible ‘whack-you-in-the-face’ kind of things, and a lot of it has to do with ideas, concepts and ways of looking at things. So it’s the opposite of “hard” or “soft”.

And, yet, perhaps we have the wrong end of the stick.

In other commonly accepted language, we call something “hard” when it’s difficult and requires special attention – in time, via experts, or in effort expended. In this language set, the opposite of “hard” is “easy” – and if it’s easy, then pretty much anyone can do it (or quickly be trained to do it). It doesn’t require too much attention and care, and generally speaking, is going to work out okay. It’s easy. Forget about it. Just go for it. It will work out. It’s easy.

Various researchers and analysts tell us that the success of collaboration systems is only 10 percent attributable to the technology, and 90 percent attributable to the culture, human factors, business strategy, and related items. Most collaboration projects that fail, don’t fail because of the technology per se, but rather how it was introduced into the business, that the culture rejected it, that people refused to use it, that it didn’t represent a big enough change, and so on. This makes me wonder: are we calling things by their wrong labels? Perhaps at the very beginning of a collaboration strategy project, it’s time to call the “soft” things “hard” (as in difficult), and the “hard” things “soft” (as in easy).

Next time you’re talking about an upcoming new system implementation, watch the words you use to describe different parts of it. What are you calling “hard” that’s actually “easy”, and what are you calling “soft” that’s actually “hard”?

Soft. It’s the new hard.