The Rethinking of Self-Checkout and the Tech Optimism Cycle

There are some predictable problems with self-checkout and they generally aren’t from consumers. Of course, some people are concerned about the job losses that this automation has created, and when something goes wrong, not having a human cashier available can be inconvenient. The bigger problem may be “shrink” - which is the industry term for people basically stealing stuff (or forgetting to scan items or thinking they scanned them when they didn’t). Self-checkout makes all of that easier to do. So, it’s not surprising that a handful of retailers are cutting back on self-checkout kiosks and rehiring human cashiers. This is a shift that has been slowly increasing over the past two years.

This evolution is a perfect metaphor for what we are likely to see happen (or perhaps are already seeing) when it comes to the adoption of other forms of technology within teams and organizations. There is an optimism from senior leaders fueled by a tempting spreadsheet analysis that illustrates savings compounding over time. Executives underestimate what negative repercussions these shifts will have and move ahead with expensive retrofitting anyway. Over time, that “all in” philosophy proves to be flawed, and a scaling back takes place, at which point people get rehired and the business comes back to the fundamentals that made them successful in the first place. There’s probably a framework someone has already developed and named for this cycle, right?