What Automation Can’t Replace

Most of my clients are in technology.  Every day I am exposed to the latest and greatest technological advances that will help quantum leap my clients' businesses and their customers' revenues to the next decade.  Nowadays, hot topics revolve around SDN, NFV, Automation, and Orchestration.

However, I have a handful of clients that I work with in Miami that are not in technology.  Most of them work in law firms.  At least once a week or so, I get an email from each of them regarding a new project or two.  This has been going on for years now.  We talk on the phone, we email back and forth, I work on their projects, I send them their products…rinse and repeat for the next year.  It’s all wonderful but in some respect, has in itself, become somewhat automated.  I know what they want, they know what they’ll get, etc.  The funny thing about this is, with the exception of one person, I’ve never met any of them face-to-face.  I know how some of them look like because I’m connected to them on LinkedIn and have seen their photos but other than that, I honestly don’t know who they really are.

Last week, I finally got a chance to meet all of them and honestly, even with all the technology we have available to us now, there’s something to be said about meeting people in person.  Face-to-face actually means taking the time to talk about things outside of work and getting to know the human that are behind the emails, texts, or phone calls.  It’s connecting on a deeper level and discovering things about them that I would never ever have gotten from a thousand business emails.  Here are some examples:

• One client lived in the Bay Area for about a year and a half, in a neighboring town from the place I grew up;
• One client is training for IronMan;
• One client married her high school sweetheart and just bought a house;
• One ex-client left her corporate job and is now a 7th grade teacher;
• One client brings home her husband his favorite dinner every Thursday night;
• One client makes every home meal from scratch;
• One soon-to-be client, lives north of Miami, and used to commute to work every day (one hour, one way!) but happily only has a 15 minute commute now;
• One client has three dogs -  two lap dogs and one that thinks she’s a lap dog;
• One client recently lost 40 lbs in the last year through a proper diet and exercise.

Here’s what else I learned:  They have a sense of humor and share the most hilarious stories.  They have compassion and are genuinely caring people.  They are hopeless romantics who tear up because they are happy for their friend, who recently got engaged.  They have an infectious laugh that can fill an entire room. 

In a world that is moving towards automation with every technology upgrade, it’s nice to take a brief pause and take a few steps towards being human again.

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