Tools second

I sat in a meeting last month where a perfectly competent VP of Sales was being asked to choose between four AI tools. None of them solved the problem the team actually had.

The pitch deck had been ordered before anyone interviewed the team.

The temptation #

AI tooling is interesting. It's tactile, it's demoable, it's easy to compare on a spreadsheet. Workflow analysis is the opposite of all those things. It takes weeks, the output is a document no one wants to read, and the conclusion is sometimes "the tool isn't the problem."

That's why tool selection runs ahead of workflow analysis. It's not because anyone thinks it's correct. It's because it's easier.

The cost of inversion #

Pick the tool first and you commit to an answer before you've defined the question. Six months later you've got a contract you can't get out of and a process the tool doesn't fit.

Pick the workflow first and the tool selection collapses to a short list of candidates that actually solve the problem. The whole thing is faster, cheaper, and lands better.

What we tell clients #

If a vendor wants to sell you tooling before they understand your team's actual work, they're not selling you a solution. They're selling you a subscription.