May – 2010 – The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

Monthly Archives: May 2010

May 6, 2010 – 10:00 am

Why Technology Will Never Replace the Human Brain

I had a gal email me with what she thought was a typo in one of my Virtual Assistant contract templates. While it turned out there wasn’t any error, I definitely appreciated the kindness of her effort to alert me. Other things have gotten past us before and it never hurts to double-check!

As it turns out, one of the reasons she alerted me was because the word in question was flagged by the spell-check feature in Word. This got me to thinking about why technology can never replace the human brain.

Take biz card readers–they’re neat and all, but they still require a human being to go through and make sure all the data converted over correctly and got inputted to the right fields.

Same thing with voice recognition software. There are folks out there who think that technology will make it so they never need another transcriber or proofreader. They could not be more wrong!

While the technology is pretty darn nifty and can be applied in all kinds of situations, there isn’t a voice recognition program out there that doesn’t still require an actual human being with a firm command of language to make sure everything was transcribed, spelled, punctuated and formatted correctly. Only a human being will know how to correct incomplete sentences and make sure all grammar rules are correctly applied.

Plus, like in this instance, just because a program like Word flags something, that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. It takes a human being to know better.

The human brain has job security! Because only the human brain can distinguish between context and apply critical thinking. Technology can’t do that. It can’t think like a person, and it doesn’t have a human being’s ability for discernment.

Language and communication are the heart of everything we do in business. Which is why it’s imperative that administrative support experts have a firm knowledge and command of these things.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Personal Musings, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged grammar skills, language skills, technology, Virtual Assistant, voice recognition software | Comments (2)

May 3, 2010 – 10:00 am

Get Your Synergy On

One of the independent experts who supports me in my business is my programmer, who has been working with me for about three years now. My tech guy (as I like to call him) and I are in the midst of several big projects. In working together, it reminds me about how awesome the dynamic is when you work with someone with whom you have an ongoing relationship. Not to mention just being able to delegate work so that my brain stays free for ideating (to borrow the term from the IBM commercial)!

That’s not to say that I just throw work at him and forget it. It’s a participatory process. I need to pay attention to his questions as they come up, and respond in a timely manner. I appreciate his skills and attention and responsiveness, and I give him the respect of responding quickly to him when he needs feedback from me. He is doing work that is important to me, after all, and it would be both rude and wasteful to make him wait on me for an undue amount of time. The wonderful thing is that there’s a mutual respect that occurs in this dynamic, one that creates a whole other creative level for brainstorming and innovation to occur.

And you know, it’s like this with Administrative Consultants as well. The participatory process that is inherent in the collaborative partnership is why clients are able to accomplish so much more with an Administrative Consultant. The back-and-forth give-and-take creates a synergy that allows you to work together at a higher, more productive level. And the longer you work together and get to know each other, the easier all of that gets.

You can’t get that kind of dynamic working with someone impersonally or only occasionally on a transactional basis. It’s something that only comes by working in close, one-to-one partnership with someone over a period of time. The longer you work together, the more your shared body of knowledge grows and the more cohesively and intuitively you are able to mesh, think and work in sync.

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