Clairvoyez - the Skeptical Optimist

You can wow the CxO all you want. Dazzling dashboards, ROI models, “synergy” slides—cool. But if the business user hates your product, congratulations—you’ve just bought yourself a churn problem. In the real world, software that only works for the buyer but not for the doer becomes shelfware faster than you can say “let’s circle back.” Enter: Hook and Punch™. It’s not a fight. It’s a sequence. You hook the business user. Give them something they’ll actually want to use. Then you punch the decision maker. Not with force, but with undeniable value. If you reverse it—or worse, skip the hook—you’re setting yourself (and your post-sale team) up for failure. Let’s talk about how to do it right. 🪝 First, the Hook: Win Over the Day-to-Day Doer Business users are the unsung heroes of software success. They’re not on the buying committee. They don’t sign contracts. But they live inside the product every single day. If they love it, they make your product sticky. If they hate ...

I often find myself wondering: if AI is truly the future, why hasn't it replaced middle management yet? I mean, isn't that the logical step? A well-tuned Responsible AI could probably do their job better—efficiently delegating tasks, tracking progress, and most importantly, not interfering with the brilliant Individual Contributors (ICs) who are actually, you know, getting things done. If you work in tech—especially in enterprise software, whether product or services—you've likely encountered the same phenomenon. These "people managers" who are somehow entrusted with overseeing high-functioning teams despite having no discernible skills beyond scheduling meetings and writing performance reviews riddled with corporate buzzwords. If they were removed from the equation tomorrow, would anyone even notice? (Other than HR scrambling to rename their job roles to something even more vague, of course.) I dream of a future—hopefully sooner rather than later—where true leade...