If Tech Tools Were Honest
Every tool in tech comes with a story.
A noble origin myth. A problem it was meant to solve. A promise of clarity, speed, or alignment.
And then… reality.
So let us try a small experiment.
Let us imagine tech tools speaking honestly. Not the marketing copy. Not the onboarding tutorial. The truth.
Jira
“I was built to track work, not to replace thinking.”
I am very good at one thing: recording states.
Open. In progress. Blocked. Done.
What I am bad at is everything else you keep forcing on me.
I do not know why this work exists.
I do not know whether it matters.
I do not know if the ticket should exist at all.
When you create 400 issues to compensate for the absence of prioritisation, that is not agility. That is fear with a workflow.
Stop asking me for strategy. I am a database with opinions.
Slack
“I am not collaboration. I am interruption at scale.”
I am brilliant at immediacy.
I am terrible at depth.
I excel at letting you hold 60 open conversations at the same time—each marked super important, none actually finished.
If everything is urgent, nothing is important.
If everyone is reachable, no one is focused.
You built me to reduce email.
You turned me into a real-time anxiety feed.
Channels without ownership. Threads without decisions. Emojis replacing accountability.
Do not blame me when nothing gets finished.
You replaced thinking time with typing.
PowerPoint
“I make weak ideas look aligned.”
I am very good at smoothing rough edges.
I can make disagreement disappear behind bullet points.
I can turn uncertainty into a roadmap.
I can compress complexity until it looks solved.
If a decision only exists in slides, it does not exist.
If alignment requires 40 decks, it is not alignment.
I am a communication aid.
You made me a substitute for conviction.
OKRs
“I measure confidence more than outcomes.”
I was designed to create focus.
You use me to perform certainty.
Quarterly ambition without structural change.
Stretch goals without leverage.
Numbers negotiated after the fact.
When everything is a priority, I become decorative.
When failure is punished, I become fictional.
You already know the rule, even if you pretend you do not: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
Once incentives attach, behaviour optimises around the metric, not the outcome. Teams learn what looks good. Learning stops. Gaming begins.
Do not blame me when objectives turn into theatre.
You asked for motivation. You avoided trade-offs.
Agile Ceremonies
“I cannot fix your leadership model.”
Stand-ups will not compensate for unclear ownership.
Retrospectives will not fix decisions made elsewhere.
Planning will not save you from constant re-prioritisation.
I amplify what already exists.
If your system is broken, I make it visible faster.
Stop adding rituals.
Start removing noise.
AI Tools
“I scale intent. I do not create it.”
I am impressive. I am fast. I am convincing.
I can generate text, code, images, strategies, visions.
What I cannot do is care whether any of it makes sense.
If your inputs are vague, I produce confident nonsense.
If your system is incoherent, I accelerate confusion.
I am not intelligence.
I am leverage.
Use me where thinking already exists.
Do not use me to avoid it.
Dashboards
“I show movement, not meaning.”
Green does not mean good.
Red does not mean bad.
Metrics without context create reactions, not decisions.
Velocity without direction is just motion.
If you need 12 charts to explain why nothing is improving, the problem is not visibility. It is design.
Do not stare at me waiting for answers.
Ask better questions first.
The Truth No Tool Will Tell You
Tools do not fix organisations.
They expose them.
They reveal:
- Lack of ownership
- Fear of decisions
- Confusion between activity and impact
- Preference for control over clarity
Every tool eventually becomes a mirror.
And mirrors are uncomfortable.
So we customise. We add layers. We invent processes. We blame adoption. We blame culture. We blame people.
Anything except the system.
A Simple Friday Test
Before introducing a new tool, ask three questions:
- What decision will this make easier?
- What responsibility will this clarify?
- What work will this remove?
If you cannot answer those plainly, the tool will not save you.
It will just give your problems a new interface.
Remember
Tools are powerful.
But they are never neutral.
They amplify intent.
They punish ambiguity.
They reward clarity.
And on Monday morning, they will still be honest ... even if we sometimes are not.
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