Technology = Environment

Actually, this should say: ADOPTED technology equals environment.

I’ve just spent the last two days in Washington, DC (the OTHER Washington, those of us from Seattle like to say), spending a great deal of time at the Natural History and Native American Museums. In both, I saw ample evidence, anthropologically speaking, about the effect that environment has on human organizations and development, and how human groups use technology to adapt and alter their environment.

In the epigenetic model, genetics and environment “dance” with each other to move the organism toward a developmental outcome. By recognizing the functional equivalency of technology to environment on the developmental process, OD practitioners will be better able to diagnose and design responses to organizational issues.

In the Natural History museum, there is a display on how tool use altered human evolution: by adopting fire as a tool to cook food, humans altered and increased the availability of nutrients in their food by making it more digestible and actually altering the chemical structure of the food. By using stone hammers to break open leg bones of large animals (even those left as picked over carcasses by predators), early humans accessed the marrow fat that even large carnivores could not get to.

By using tools (technology) and passing this use along as part of their culture (more on this in future posts), early humans altered their genetic makeup over time. The individuals who benefitted from the better nutrition were able to (we assume) grow stronger, live longer and reproduce in greater numbers.

Here is the point: when we look at organizations, are we evaluating the technology that group is using as part of their environmental resources? Are we looking at the technology that may have “spawned” the group in the first place (think Microsoft or any other business, government or institution that depends on tools to do their work)? Are there technologies that, if adopted, alter their way of doing work, thereby changing their culture?