Frogs. Those of us in business don’t think very often about this particular species of animal. Most of us are focused on higher planes and more abstract thoughts and whatever particular widget we’re producing. We should instead be focused on this amazing amphibian – any company worth its weight should be like a frog.

It’s kind of like that scene in Jerry McGuire. Jerry is talking to the cute kid and they’re battling it out for who can say some crazy factoid the quickest and have the other react. Like: “D’you know that the human head weighs 8 pounds? Did you know that Troy Aikman, in only six years, has passed for 16,303 yards?” Stay with me here.

The frog is the only animal that can’t go backwards.

Now we could apply this particular froggy trait to our lives personally, but that’s for another time and another place. Think about it in terms of your business. Is your business only moving forward? Is it headed into the next century with zeal, technology and profits? Is your team moving forward together? What about your best business practices? Are they the best they can be and forward-bound? Have you analyzed the efficiency of your organization to know what can be cut to protect your bottom line – all in that linear move ahead? We’re talking about not running around in circles or taking steps backwards.

We meet with lots of business people who tell us how they have started their move toward a paperless environment, scanning in an effort to drive their business forward. They know we will want to know…’cause, shucks, that’s all we really care about! They tell us about the cool multi-function sales guy who came by and told them how this technology will solve all their problems. They tell us about how excited everyone was to get this great technology. They tell us how lines formed around the machines for the first couple of weeks as people scanned until they had blisters on their fingers. Then they tell us they all kind of feel like they just took a step backwards!

They tell stories about users not being able to find what they scanned. They give us scenarios of the types of searches they have realized they need to do but can’t. They wonder, incredulously, why they did better with their file cabinets.

We smile our best smiles as we explain that embracing a new technology does not necessarily move you forward. We tell them that scanning is to document management as pressing a brake pedal is to driving . It is critical to your success, but worthless in isolation. We explain underlying databases, Boolean search and date-range searches. We excitedly paint a picture of retention management and email management. We watch as the light goes on. THEY GET IT! They frown. They ponder their plight. They realize…they are NOT a frog. And then the work begins…