The $100,000 Question Nobody Wants to Answer
i remember being on a call with one of my very first clients at Omniture. This was the early 2000s, and i was a young consultant trying to help brands make sense of web analytics. The company had just spent $100,000 on SiteCatalyst, serious money then, serious money now.
i asked them a question i thought was straightforward: "Why is deploying our solution important for you?"
The answer came without hesitation: "Honestly, we don't know. We're just being told to do it because someone on our board said we should do it."
i tried my best. i really did. But watching that company flounder around with their expensive new data tool, never extracting real value from it, taught me something that would prove uncomfortably prophetic over the next two decades.
History Doesn't Repeat, But It Sure Does Rhyme
Twenty-plus years deep in the data world and i keep watching the same movie play out with different actors.
After web analytics, it was heat maps and scroll maps. "Why are we implementing this?" I'd ask. The answer usually being, "I had lunch with a friend who implemented Crazy Egg and it transformed their business."
Then came A/B testing and optimization platforms. Same question. Same type of answer.
Then the next thing. And the next thing. And the next thing.
Today, it's AI.
Senior executives are saying things like, "We need to integrate AI analyst agents into our workflow." When you ask why, you hear, "It's what everyone's talking about. It's what the board is saying we need to do. It's what investors are asking about. It's what AI companies are saying is the next thing."
And here's what frustrates me most, we're not learning. We're not recognizing the pattern. We're making the same mistake we've been making for twenty years, just with shinier tools.
The Part That Makes This Painful
Let me be very clear about something. these tools have immense inherent value.
i've used them throughout my career. i've helped some of the world's most recognizable brands use them. Web analytics, heat maps, optimization platforms, AI tools, they can be genuinely transformative. They provide deep insights into consumer behavior patterns. They reveal how people engage with your digital products and platforms. They create opportunities to deliver better, more positive customer experiences. They free up team members to work on more complex, valuable tasks.
The tools aren't the problem.
The problem is why we're adopting them.
If your reason for implementing these technologies is "because everyone else is doing it," or "because our board is telling us we need to," or "because my friend at another company is doing it" - my experience has shown me, over and over again, that you're destined to fail.
What Actually Works
The companies i've worked with that succeeded, the ones i've continued to work with over the years, they have something different. They have a vision. Not just for what tool they're selecting, but for why they're selecting it. They know what they're hoping to get out of it. They've thought it through.
It's not that they're smarter or have bigger budgets. It's that they've done the work. They know why they specifically are doing this. They know what they're going to get out of it. They've figured out how they're going to invest in it - with budget, with people, with support structures.
These organizations understand that wise leadership isn't about knowing every tool that comes along. It's about knowing which tools to use, when to use them, and most importantly, why.
The Trap We Keep Falling Into
There's a meaningful percentage of senior leadership teams that fall into this trap. And look, they may actually be right that they should adopt AI, or optimization tools, or whatever the next technology is. They may genuinely need these capabilities.
But they need to put in the work first.
Not the work of implementation. The work of understanding. The work of strategy. The work of purpose.
Rarely, and i mean rarely, have i seen an organization succeed with "we don't have a plan, we don't have a strategy, but we're going to buy this product and therefore we're going to be successful."
When it has worked in the past, it's been nothing other than pure luck. Hitting the lottery. And the lottery is a horrible investment strategy.
The Question That Changes Everything
So here's what i want you to take away from this, whether you're the executive making adoption decisions or the practitioner who has to make these tools actually work:
Before you implement the next hot thing, before you sign the contract, before you assign the team, before you start the rollout, ask yourself one question: Why are we doing this?
Not "why is this tool valuable in general." Not "why are other companies doing this." Not "why does our board think we should do this."
Why are WE, specifically, doing this? What are WE trying to accomplish? How will WE know if we've succeeded? What are WE willing to invest to make it work?
If you can't answer those questions with clarity and purpose, you're that company sitting across from a young consultant, about to spend $100,000 on something you don't understand, for reasons you can't articulate.
Twenty years later, i can tell you exactly how that story ends.
Don't let it be yours.
Tired of implementing tools without purpose? At 33 Sticks, we help organizations build data strategies that start with "why" - not "what's trending." Whether you're evaluating a new analytics platform or your next A/B testing strategy, let's talk about creating a purposeful approach that delivers real value for your specific business needs.
