Sound Business Preparation for Metaverse Changes

By SBE Council at 6 July, 2023, 11:33 am

SMALL BUSINESS INSIDER

by Raymond J. Keating – 

When potentially significant technological and other changes loom large on the horizon, we perhaps can lose some focus on, or even become paralyzed by what might need to be done in preparation. Or at the other extreme, we can look to be early adopters without completely doing our homework. One wonders how many business owners and managers could be experiencing any of this while waiting to gain further clarity as to how the metaverse might actually play out for their own industry and business.

With that in mind, it’s worth reading a Forbes article by Klaudia Zaika titled “Invest In Project Management Before Shifting To The Metaverse.” Zaika basically raises potential issues and questions, and tries to get people thinking about solutions and opportunities.

The article is worth a quick read, but here are a few highlight-worthy points to keep in mind…

• “A significant challenge will be figuring out which conventional tools to substitute with virtual and augmented reality solutions and which to keep using.”

• “The art of project management involves reading people’s moods. However, it will be hard for PMs to gauge people’s moods when talking to avatars, especially with the weak graphics many metaverse solutions offer now.”

Of course, this isn’t a new issue, given that mobile and at-home work for many serve up similar challenges regarding gauging moods and outlook.

• “…once challenges have been outlined, it’s essential to discuss them with PMs and draw up a strategy for dealing with them together. This helps my teams prepare for possible issues beforehand and continuously improve their project management skills.”

• “To align current processes with metaverse tools, PMs first need to research all the pros, cons, risks, hardware requirements, etc. They need to evaluate how useful certain platforms could be for PM activities before deciding whether they are worth the time and money.”

• “Make sure your managers evaluate the usefulness of metaverse tools in business processes. This will help you decide whether to keep using certain solutions or switch to others.”

• “With trendy technologies like the metaverse, it’s important to determine the real benefits you can get and ensure they’re worth the cost.”

Again, these last few points are not new. It’s about avoiding the impulse to just dive in. That is, remember to look, and think, before you leap. This challenge has been the case with all kinds of changes over time – such as in the areas of technology, operations, management tools and thinking, etc. But this article and similar ones provide periodic, necessary reminders about making sure that the changes at hand or just over the horizon will make sense for one’s company, and how so.

In the end, the metaverse is bringing new opportunities and challenges, along with some challenges we’ve seen before.

Raymond J. Keating is chief economist for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council. His latest books on the economy are The Weekly Economist: 52 Quick Reads to Help You Think Like an Economist and The Weekly Economist II: 52 More Quick Reads to Help You Think Like an Economist.