Start Upstream

Photo by Robert Zunikoff

When it comes to technology you’re kinda being set up to fail, by the way the market for technology is structured.

Let’s say you realize you need to fix your organization’s technology, because you’re increasingly seeing how everything you can do — and everything you can become — depends on it.

How do you go about starting that process? For the most part you either find a tool that promises to fix your problems and you buy licenses for it, or you find a firm or a consultant to build you something.

But if you’re starting your technology investment by buying licenses, or by soliciting bids for a build, unfortunately the game is already lost.

Where you should have started was several altitudes up from that, with the technology leadership skillset needed to map and understand the full spectrum of needs and opportunities, and synthesize a roadmap to a better tomorrow. And then to oversee the complex symphony of work required to get there.

That's mostly not technical work, that's strategic work. It’s a combination of understanding of humans and their unique work and goals and hurdles, together with a mastery of the possibilities of your specific platforms. It’s the same thing you would do for any high value area of work, and your technology investments require that level of leadership too.

Of course it’s a big job, requiring a lot of time and effort from seasoned players, focused on solving your particular puzzles. That work is ongoing, ever needed, ever changing, ever relevant, and you probably didn’t budget for it. On top of which it’s not what the external implementation firm you’re talking to is set up to offer.

So when you see this, it’s tempting to say ‘forget it’ and hope buying those licenses or hiring that firm to build that thing will help enough for now, and you’ll just have to figure out the rest later.

If that’s the route you choose, you’re in good company. Just be assured that whatever dysfunction you’re struggling with will get worse, and today’s solution will likely contribute to tomorrow’s headache.

If you want to build the right thing, start upstream of the build, with seasoned technology leadership capable of plotting the course and then moving you forward on a long journey out of the muck, and steadily, relentlessly, towards an almost unimaginably better future.

It’s not the most readily-available path for you to purchase. But it’s the path you need in order to get where you want to go.