Saving and amplifying these excellent few paragraphs Lynn Roberts posted on LinkedIn (I’ve abridged it a bit but the whole original post is word perfect):
There’s always a temptation to focus on the extremes – the AI revolution or the broken CRM that needs replacing – instead of the more pedestrian truth in the middle.
But I think a lot of the real impact comes from the unglamorous layer: simplifying processes that no one owns, cleaning up long-neglected data, or standardising just enough to be useful without flattening nuance. It’s slow, often invisible work – but essential if you want anything transformative to stick.
[…] When things aren’t working, it’s easy to think you need to start again. And the potential around automation and AI is exciting – reduced admin, improved access, faster scale. But it only works if the foundations are in place. If your data is unreliable or your processes unclear, what exactly are you automating? What is AI basing its decisions on?
Often the boldest move is not innovation or a rebuild – it’s getting serious about making what you have actually work. That means defining what good looks like, building continuous improvement cycles, and sorting governance so that decisions get made and stuck to. You need product management, service standards and clarity around decisions.
The exciting, future-facing stuff is definitely worth doing but it’s just the tip of the transformation iceberg. If we want sustainable change, we also need to do the bits below the surface really, really well.”