Zooming Out Before You Speed Up

This story is a warning to every business tempted by the promises of any new shiny technology, including automation and AI. We should all strive for greater efficiency and it’s easy to get swept up in the buzz: faster workflows, smarter decisions, leaner operations. But there’s a crucial step that often gets skipped: understanding the system first.

Most organisations aren’t broken because of a lack of automation or AI. They’re struggling because their underlying systems: processes, data structures, team responsibilities are complex, fragile, and full of blind spots. These are the foundations needed for any tech strategy to work.

And what happens when you apply automation or AI on top of those broken systems? You don’t fix the problem – you amplify it.

Is Your Business Ready for AI? Start with the System

Here’s the hard truth about AI: you can’t bolt AI onto chaos and expect clarity. You can’t automate dysfunction and expect efficiency.

The pressure to adopt AI is enormous – boards are asking for it, competitors are doing it, headlines are full of it. But in the rush, many leaders overlook the less glamorous, more difficult work: auditing the data estate, understanding legacy constraints, untangling process spaghetti, and designing for the future, not the past.

That’s where Systems Thinking is your friend. It’s not a buzzword. It’s a discipline. A way of stepping back to see the whole picture: how work flows, where delays occur, where feedback loops exist (or don’t), and what unintended consequences are lurking beneath the surface.

One of the best explorations of this is Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, where she reminds us that systems behave in ways we don’t always expect and go against our intuitions – and that lasting change only comes from understanding, and mapping, the patterns beneath the surface rather than simply reacting to symptoms

The Right Technology Needs the Right Foundations

I’m sounding rather grumpy here, aren’t I? Let me be really clear: new technology can absolutely transform your business – though you may need help in understanding your own context, building a strategy and getting the prerequisite ducks in a row.

Here’s what that might mean in practice:

• Your data needs to be clean, reliable, and well-understood.
• Your architecture needs to be suitably scalable for your needs, as decoupled as possible, and observable.
• Your people need to understand not just how tools work, but how the business works as a system.

And it’s these areas where many companies need help.

You don’t need just developers or automation tools – you need experienced architects, transformation partners, and system thinkers. People who can guide you through the chaos and help you build a roadmap that aligns technology with real outcomes.

Don’t Build a Faster Mess

There’s a famous quote by Peter Drucker:

Automation done wrong is exactly that, a faster mess. A high-speed version of a broken system.

If your data is untrustworthy, if your processes are poorly understood, if your systems are rigid and siloed, then automation will only get you to the wrong destination faster.

But if you start with clarity – about the system, the constraints, the flow of work, and bring in the right expertise to design for flexibility and scale, then automation and AI become game-changers.

Final Thoughts

And my word, how the game can change.

Automation, at its most basic level, is a time saver. But when it’s built on solid foundations: clean data, well-designed processes, and thoughtful system architecture – it becomes something far more powerful. It becomes a launchpad.

This is when the real magic starts to happen:

• You stop reacting to problems and start anticipating them.
• AI doesn’t just analyse; it augments your decision-making.
• Integration isn’t a painful retrofit; it’s an engine for new value streams.
• Your people stop battling systems, and start using them to do their best work.

With the right foundations in place, you unlock possibilities:

• Hyper-personalised customer experiences
• Real-time insight that drives smarter strategy
• Seamless collaboration across teams and ecosystems
• Freedom to adopt emerging technologies without fear of collapse

You go from tinkering with tools to genuinely transforming how your business operates. That future isn’t reserved for the tech elite. It’s available to anyone who chooses to zoom out, see the system, and build with intention.

So, take the time. Do the groundwork. Because the step-change you’re looking for? It doesn’t start with a tool. It starts with the system.