The Copy-Paste Shuffle

The fluorescent lights in the corner office hum with a frequency that usually goes unnoticed until you’re staring at a bill for $500,003 and a spreadsheet that refuses to die. Kevin, a junior sales rep with a caffeine habit that would make an ER doctor wince, is currently executing a maneuver known as the ‘copy-paste shuffle.’ He’s got Salesforce open on his left monitor-a pristine, expensive interface designed by the brightest minds in Silicon Valley-and an Excel file from 2023 on his right. He highlights a row of lead data in the spreadsheet, hits Ctrl+C, and then manually types the name into the CRM because the import tool ‘feels weird’ to him. Watching this from the doorway is the VP of Sales, whose eye is twitching in a way that suggests a localized neurological event.

The Clumsy Human Factor

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, mostly because I recently experienced a similar moment of digital friction that left me feeling exposed. I was scrolling through a social media feed-part of my work as an online reputation manager-and I accidentally liked a photo of my ex from 3 years ago. It was a 3:03 AM post about a vacation I wasn’t on. The sudden spike of adrenaline, the frantic un-liking, the realization that the digital footprint remains even if the intention was hidden… it’s the same feeling a CEO gets when they realize their ‘state-of-the-art’ pipeline is actually just a collection of sticky notes and half-forgotten emails. We invest in these massive architectures thinking they will save us from ourselves, but we’re still the same clumsy humans clicking buttons we shouldn’t.

We build the runways (the CRM), we put on the headphones (the Slack channels), and we wait for the planes of productivity to land. But the planes never come because we forgot that you need actual pilots, not just people who know how to wear the uniform.

Thomas M.-C. argues that we are living in a cargo cult of software. This isn’t a problem of user adoption. That’s a corporate euphemism used by consultants to blame the staff for a lack of training. The real issue is expertise application. You can buy a Steinway for $100,003, but if you don’t hire a pianist, you’ve just bought a very heavy piece of furniture that gathers dust.

The Ferrari and The Lawn Mower

I remember talking to a founder who was bragging about their $200,003 implementation of a new ERP system. He pointed to his operations manager who already had 63 other responsibilities. It’s like buying a Ferrari and asking the guy who mows your lawn to be the lead mechanic. Sure, he might figure out how to put gas in it, but he’s never going to get it to 203 miles per hour.

This is where the ROI vanishes. You aren’t paying for the software; you’re paying for the outcome the software promises. If you don’t have the talent to bridge that gap, the money is gone the moment the contract is signed.

Finding the Pilots

To fix this, we have to stop looking at tech as a line item and start looking at it as a talent requirement. If you are going to spend $300,003 on a platform, you need to spend a proportional amount on the people who actually know how to wield it.

I’ve watched Thomas M.-C. try to clean up the reputations of companies that fell apart because their internal systems couldn’t keep up with their growth. It’s a messy process. It usually involves a deep dive into the ‘shadow IT’ that employees have built to survive.

The Home Automation Folly

I once knew a guy who spent $153,003 on a home automation system. He could control everything from his phone. But he never learned how to program the ‘scenes.’ So, every night at 10:03 PM, his kitchen lights would turn bright purple and the sprinkler system would go off in the backyard because that was the factory default.

We must stop being impressed by the demo. Every software demo is a lie. Real life is a database full of ‘Test’ and ‘Asdfgh’ entries. To combat this, you need a curator. You need a librarian for your data, a mechanic for your workflows, and a strategist for your output.