Max: 00:08 Hi. I’m Max Clark. This comes up all the time, and it’s really in tech, we end up into these debates, these arguments about tech. You know, what service, what tool, what box, what widget, what language, what code, what framework, everything. Right?
Max: 00:21 What laptop, what CPU, what GPU? You know, there’s like an endless cycle around, you know, what’s the right thing and why, and this is better than that. And for the most part, it’s a complete waste of time. And I’m guilty of it. I do this all the time.
Max: 00:33 And when I catch myself doing it, I slap myself in the face and I move on with life. You know, sometimes it takes a while before I really catch it. It’s a completely backwards way of evaluating and selecting hardware, software, subscription services, process, whatever you’re working on. It’s just completely backwards. And I have a post it note on my computer right now, which is, you know, before you get into a debate around the tool or the technology, the first question you should be asking is is should you even be doing it in the first place?
Max: 00:57 Does this actually even benefit the business? You know, generate revenue? Does it increase leverage? Does it improve efficiency, make operations better, make people’s lives measurably better? What is the actual outcome that you’re trying to get here?
Max: 01:09 I’ll give you a really good example. We run Google Workspace, and we’re so we’re Mac dominant desktop, Google Workspace. And if you are a Mac dominant desktop with Google Workspace, then you end up with a whole bunch of ancillary tools and tooling that goes on top of that for your productivity stack. And what’s common? You’ll see, you know, for instance, notion, some sort of knowledge base.
Max: 01:27 Right? And then you get into what is your chat, you know, probably Slack depending on on the age of your organization. And what comes next? You need a task and project management tool. Right?
Max: 01:35 So, you know, Asana. And you just start kind of working your way through this list. By the way, if you’re a Microsoft 3 65 based company, you’re probably not having these conversations because you’re probably just investing in the bundle. Right? So instead of running and paying for Slack or debating Slack versus something else, which is in this case, Google’s chat and spaces tool, you’re just gonna be running Microsoft Teams.
Max: 01:53 Right? Now you we can talk about whether or not a team’s is good or bad or everything along those lines, but, you know, you’re just probably not having that conversation because the decision was made for you already. Now what we’ve done here, and this is gonna sound really crazy, is we’ve started moving away from me back up. We got into a really big debate around Asana versus Monday versus ClickUp versus Basecamp versus Notion doing it all inside of Notion. And all these tools, you know, going back to Confluence and Jira, you know, whatever.
Max: 02:18 Right? All these are really good tools. They’re phenomenal tools. They’re all great. They all do things great.
Max: 02:22 You know? It’s not a critique on, like, one’s better than the other or one’s bad or one’s you know? This just comes back to should you even be doing in the first place? For instance, Airtable. We run Airtable in a lot of places.
Max: 02:30 Do we need Airtable? And when we start taking it apart and going backwards, what are we actually trying to achieve, and what do we actually need to do? We found that we should just be using Google Drive. It’s native. Everybody has access to it.
Max: 02:41 It has really good search. We have native security controls. We don’t have to layer an additional SSO or SCIM. We can create references in Google Sheets to the different Google Docs. We can create links in Google Docs to other Google Docs.
Max: 02:54 We can share the docs externally. It seems crazy when you first kind of discover it, then you start using it. You’re like, this is actually really amazing. And by the way, I didn’t we didn’t come up with this this this was a byproduct of Matt Mosheri and the way that they organize their documentation and I guess you call like their lessons that they share and the beauty here is simplicity the easier things are the more use they get the easier it is to find information the more it’s usable. The faster it is to record information, the more it gets captured.
Max: 03:21 And that’s the goal. The goal is not what tool are you in? And by the way, we can take this to other things. Should you run Cisco, Meraki, Palo Alto, or FortiGate firewalls? Now I’d probably actually tell you shouldn’t be running any of those because you should probably be on some sort of sassy environment with a modern federated cloud based infrastructure.
Max: 03:38 That’s a different rant. Okay. Which access points? Meraki, Fortinet, Juniper, Aruba, Ubiquiti. We can get into this till, you know, till the end of the world.
Max: 03:46 And there are cases where one versus the other actually makes a lot of sense and makes a big difference but when you actually boil it down what are you trying to achieve with these things you know in our case we’re trying to store information so that way we could share it internally and externally and retrieve it fast you know what’s the fastest best way of easiest way of doing that and that just turned into this thing of Google you know where else do I fall into this trap oh my goodness CRM let’s talk about CRM Salesforce versus HubSpot versus Pipedrive versus copper or using something like front maybe a standalone Zoho or SugarCRM and you get trapped in these things and you get paralyzed in these things and the point is if you’re spending that much time and you’re getting trapped you’re getting paralyzed into it you’ve already blown it you’ve already blown it just pick and move on just decide and move on I took a photography class years ago digital photography class years years years ago and the instructor is was this very well known very famous photographer and she was teaching this class so there’s the hint you know she’s a woman and the course of the class something came out that was a really interesting observation.
Max: 04:42 And it was a conversation. It was really the and I don’t remember how it happened. Somebody was asking a question about equipment. Like, what was the best camera to get or what was the best lens to get? And she made this observation, the difference between and boy, I’m gonna get it for this one.
Max: 04:53 The difference between men and women as related to photography and this was her observation after being a photographer for decades and teaching photography for many many years and how much she noticed the men were getting hung up on the technical differences of it what camera should I buy? What lens should I buy? What settings should I use? What SD card do I need? What bag should I have?
Max: 05:13 Versus the women that would just go out and start taking pictures and how much quicker they would progress and how much better they would be in a shorter amount of time because they were seeing what worked and what didn’t work, and they were getting feedback much quicker that the feedback loop was faster. And that was probably the second time I really heard this lesson that really stood out for me. And, of course, I was guilty of it. Should I get this camera? Should I get this other camera?
Max: 05:30 I was one of those people that was trying to figure that out. I do that all the time. Light switches, which light switch should I buy? I mean, it’s it’s endless. You can’t you can once you fall into the trap, you can’t escape it.
Max: 05:38 Anyways, the point here is is if you find yourself in this conversation, try to take a step back from the conversation. Before you get into a debate of the tool, should you even be doing it in the first place? Like, is is there something that’s easier to do? Find a simpler way. Just do the simpler thing.
Max: 05:51 Might not be elegant. It might not be sexy. It might not be modern. It might not get you an article written about you in the Harvard Business Review. But who cares?
Max: 05:57 Because what really matters is just are you moving the ball forward? And if you’re consistently moving the ball forward every single day, that’s how you build, and that’s how you progress, and that’s how you end up winning. So if you haven’t noticed, this is really a video for myself just to remind me to not do this. And when I get into these traps to try to get myself out of these traps. Hi, Max Clark.
Max: 06:12 I hope this helps you. If you’re currently in this debate, love to hear your comments and what you’ve seen and what you’ve gone through yourself. Love your stories.
