Lately, I’ve found that I’ve been using a particular analogy a lot. The analogy is, let’s say your customers are race car teams. NASCAR, Formula One, Monster Truck, whatever. But the point is, a race car team, at the enterprise scale, needs many things working together. A race car team is not just a car. It’s not just tires, or spark plugs. It’s also mechanics, tools, garages, training, practice tracks, even all sorts of non-obvious things like driver nutrition and hydration and analytics tools for engine performance.

The problem is, I see a lot of enterprise services organizations get fixated on a singular portion. They become hyper-focused on selling the tires, the wrenches used by the mechanics, the garages where the cars are parked, and lose sight of the big picture. They pull the leaders and decision makers of the race car team into a conference room and spend a lot of time and energy trying to show how their newest wrench design is just the greatest ever, it takes 12% less rotations and delivers more torque than ever before. But if I’m an executive leader for a race car team, do I care?

What’s tricky is the answer is, yes, of course I do, better wrenches means better performance. But that single new wrench is not going to suddenly solve all my problems and make me a better performing race car team. How does that wrench fit in with all those other things I mentioned? Can mechanics do their job faster, and get less tired? Does this remove some training time, for how to use complex wrenches? Does this improve the quality of the car engine, because certain bolts are now tightened in a more specific way?

You might be the greatest wrench designer ever, but if you don’t have an understanding of your customer’s entire business space, and how your new wrench fits in and makes things holistically better, then it’s just a wrench. And a race car team doesn’t just want a new wrench, they want to be higher performing so they can win.