Managing the Board

Here’s the three letters we use to resolve knee-jerk changes to tech strategy.

W. H. Y.

Most reading this will be familiar with Gartner’s hype curve, but there’s a far unhealthier tech adoption cycle in our experience. In the last two years, requests for Block-chain ready, Clubhouse chat-worthy, Tik-Tok vibing, Metaverse busting NFT’s have flooded the consultancy and agency space. And we know those that have rubbed their hands in glee to provide many a “solution”.

Our response is always: why?

The motivation behind jumping onto a new tech trend often has little to do with customer experience, or commercial opportunity, but everything to do with stakeholder want.

We’ve had requests to launch multi-million-pound projects because someone’s children are using a new app, or because a competitor showed off their version of something on the golf course, or because an agency pitched it to them over dinner. Often very little thought has gone into whether it would improve the customer experience, drive commercial opportunity, or deliver any return for the investment needed. And don’t be mistaken, these ideas are an investment. Whether it’s bespoke content, development work, pro accounts or simply the time needed to manage and maintain another channel, magpie marketing can be costly.

So next time you’re called into the board, or meeting senior stakeholders, try asking why five times, (an interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem) and you’ll likely get to the true answer as to why someone thinks a technology is worth investing in.

We know that making your next best technology decision is a minefield. That’s why we design strategies that marry the right technologies with commercial opportunity and culture in a sustainable way.

Call us and we’ll help you ask why you should invest in something or not.

Get in contact here to find out more