do our tools make us work this way?

Look at the tools you use for your work. How many are for anyone to use, and how many are designed for specific roles?

CRMs like Salesforce are for sales teams. Jira targets product managers and engineers. Gainsight and Vitally focus on customer success. These role-specific tools can be helpful, but they often can force us into more rigid processes than we need. Instead of the tools complementing how we work, we work to suit the tool.

Is that best for our teams? For our businesses?

CRMs kind of encourage straight line thinking. Deal flows, tasks, and queues tell us “the best way" to sell, but real sales cycles rarely follow neat funnels. Depending too much on specialized tools can limit creativity and risk taking.

What if these “best in class" tools are constraining? What can we do?

Take stock of everything you use. Review how you use it. Consider cutting back to fewer, more versatile tools.

Why does this matter?

In lots of large companies, entire roles exist solely to manage one tool. Salesforce implementations, for instance, can take forever and cost a fortune, yet often leave users frustrated, even with heavy customization.

Now imagine being a smaller business owner who has to hire someone just to keep others productive in one piece of software. Then multiply that by managers, SOPs, workflows, and more tools—none of which directly boost revenue.

It’s worth asking whether our tools drive our processes or our processes drive our tools. If it’s the former, perhaps it’s time to rethink which tools truly serve us—and which nudge us into straight-line work.

Peter

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