Stop Walking Through the Grass: Fix Your Business Processes First

Picture this: You're walking down a sidewalk when you notice something that makes you stop and think. Right next to this perfectly good concrete path, there's a patch of grass that's completely beaten down from people walking across it instead of using the sidewalk.

I see this all the time, and it drives me crazy because it's exactly what's happening in companies everywhere with their digital transformation and AI projects.

We build these beautiful technology "sidewalks"—spend millions on sophisticated systems, cutting-edge AI tools, expensive platforms—but then we act shocked when people create their own worn-out grass paths around them. And here's the thing that really gets me: we blame the people instead of asking why they're not using what we built.

Let's Talk About the Real Numbers (And They're Ugly)

I'm going to hit you with some statistics that should make every executive lose sleep. Ready? 70% of digital transformations fail. But wait, it gets worse. AI projects? They fail at an 80% rate—that's double the failure rate of regular IT projects.

We're not talking about minor hiccups here. We're talking about complete train wrecks that burn through millions of dollars and leave everyone wondering what the hell happened.

Want a real example? Philip Morris tried to roll out a global sales analytics platform. Looked perfect on paper, right? Wrong. They never bothered to understand that their regional teams were tracking sales completely differently. Some did daily numbers, others monthly. The data was a mess, and the whole thing collapsed after they'd already spent millions.

Sound familiar? This is what happens when we get so excited about the shiny new technology that we forget to understand how people actually work.

Why Everyone's Walking Through the Grass

Here's what I've learned after watching company after company make the same mistakes: Most organizations don't leverage the tools they buy. And it's not because people are stupid or resistant to change. It's because we've created processes that are either too complicated, completely at odds with the technology, or just don't make sense for how customers actually want to do business with us.

When that happens, people find workarounds. They create their own "grass paths" around your beautiful systems. And over time, this completely undermines your technology investment because now everyone's asking for changes that don't make sense. But here's the kicker—it's not because the technology is wrong. It's because people have changed the process to make their lives easier, and now they're trying to force the systems to support how they actually work instead of how you want them to work.

This happens because we rush. We don't take time to understand the business processes before we implement systems. We skip the hard work of getting clear alignment. We do some basic training, but we don't create real measurements to make sure people are actually following the process and getting the outcomes we want. Then we wonder why everything falls apart.

The Silo Problem That's Killing Us

Business processes in most companies evolve like weeds—everywhere, with no coordination. Marketing does their thing, sales does theirs, customer success operates in their own world. Nobody sits down together to map out how customers should actually experience working with you.

The result? Customers get frustrated because they have to repeat information, data quality is terrible, and handoffs between departments feel like playing telephone tag.

For years, we've celebrated the hero employees who somehow make things work despite all this chaos. But now we're trying to implement AI that's supposed to make everything better, and I keep hearing executives say, "Turn it on, all the other executives I talk to are doing it and see great results"

Here's the reality check: You still need humans in the loop. Computers are incredibly powerful, but they need to be fed good, consistent information to figure out how to deliver the outcomes you want. If you're feeding AI contradictory data because somewhere along the line people changed how they work, you're setting yourself up for expensive failure.

Why AI Makes This Even More Critical

Here's what scares me about AI implementations: AI doesn't just use your broken processes—it amplifies them at scale. If your processes are messed up, AI will scale that mess-up at lightning speed across your entire organization.

Think about it: 42% of companies have already deployed AI, and 40% more are experimenting with it. Yet we're still seeing these massive failure rates. The difference between the companies that succeed and the ones that fail? The successful ones got their processes right first.

What You Actually Need to Do (And It's Not That Complicated)

Look, your business processes don't have to be perfect, but they do have to exist, and they have to make sense. Here's what actually works:

Stop Pretending and Start Documenting: Write down how things actually work, not how you think they work or how you wish they worked. Include all the workarounds and shortcuts people have created. This is where the real process lives.

Host Conversations: Talk to people and listen to how they are talking about the process, the challenges, the workaround, the good and the bad. Ensure you look for connection points between roles and departments and then add them to the conversation.

Create Real Measurements: If you can't measure whether your process is working, you can't fix it when it's not. Simple as that.

Fix Things Fast: When your metrics show something's not working, change it quickly. Don't wait for complete disaster.

Hold Leaders Accountable: This is huge. Your managers and executives need to be held responsible for process outcomes, not just the people using the processes. Process failure is leadership failure.

Invest in Real Enablement: You need people whose job it is to make sure processes actually work in the real world. They need to work with operations and IT to make changes when needed.

Break Down the Walls: Your customers don't care about your department boundaries. Their experience should be seamless, which means your processes need to work across departments.

The Bottom Line (And Why This Matters More Than Ever)

We keep making the same mistake over and over: we fall in love with the technology and ignore the foundation.

Get them right, and your technology investments will actually deliver what they promised. Ignore them, and you'll become part of that 70-80% failure statistic.

Here's what I know after watching this play out countless times: The companies that win with AI won't be the ones with the fanciest technology. They'll be the ones that took the time to understand how work actually gets done and built processes that make sense for both humans and machines.

The technology is ready. The question is: are you willing to do the hard work of getting your processes right, or are you going to keep wondering why everyone's walking through your grass instead of using your expensive sidewalks?

Don't let broken processes turn your digital transformation into another expensive learning experience. Your customers, your employees, and your shareholders are counting on you to get this right.

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