An Honest Assessment is the Start of Most Improvements to the Business

In my conversations with CEOs and other Marketing executives, there is often a common theme of: "Our technology is not serving our needs."

If you listen to the stories, there are a number of common symptoms:

- The person who selected that platform is no longer here.

- Nobody is sure why the platform was selected.

- We thought it would be a good idea to have one vendor for both

functions. It turns out, the biggest thing we need it doesn't do very well.

- When I got here, the platform was already chosen, but we have too much invested now to change direction.

- This system doesn't have a technical owner.

These symptoms are the "fire". But to a business owner, you aren't close enough to it to see the fire, it just seems like every change is 10x more difficult than it needs to be.

While it might seem that changing a platform doesn't immediately produce any business value, keep in mind that not changing the platform doesn't produce any, either.

Some questions I like to use are:

Is this platform helping you get closer to your goals or do they always seem far away?

Do my competitors seem to be innovating faster than our company?

Is that perception just my perception, or is it reality?

If it is reality, what are some of the underlying reasons that may be the case?

Is this area of the business extremely critical to growth or our customer's satisfaction?

Improving your business is hard, but honesty is sometimes easier than you think. Just that willingness to be honest with your current situation is often the first step you need.