Before You Open The Laptop

Last week I handed a client a working system. It calculates prices. Something that used to take two people, spreadsheets, and a phone call now takes seconds. Clean. Reliable. Done.

On my way home, I opened my Moleskine and jotted what bothered me about it: Not the system, the system works. What bothered me was the meeting before we built it. The founder kept asking: “What else can we automate?” Before we’d even understood what the first thing was supposed to solve.

I’ve watched this happen in SMBs boardrooms for over twenty years. The tool arrives – ERP, CRM, now AI – and suddenly the question is never what problem are we solving? It’s what else can this do?

The tool stops serving the system. The system starts serving the tool.

There’s always a moment when this happens. I’ve started trying to catch it; in client meetings, in my own thinking. It’s the moment when the conversation shifts from outcomes to features.

That’s when I close the laptop.

Not forever. Just long enough to ask the question the tool can’t ask for you: What are we actually trying to achieve here?

Question:

Think about the last tool you adopted — app, system, process. Did you start with the problem, or with the tool?

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