“Chasing the system”

When something unexpected happens in your CRM system, you have two choices.

You can chase the system.
Or, you can try to understand it.

"Chasing the system" is my term for hacking away at things just enough to make them look good.

A report seems wrong?
Change the data until the report looks right.

Someone didn't receive a mailing?
Add them to a different group.

Staff member gets an error?
Give them another permission.

Sometimes it even makes the symptoms go away.

But your understanding doesn't improve.

Do that often enough, and you end up with a system full of mysterious fixes that nobody understands and everybody is afraid to touch.

The alternative feels slower.

Instead of asking, "What should I change?"
Ask, "Why did this happen?"

That one question changes everything.

Every answer makes your mental model a little more accurate.

And over time, that's what makes you effective.

The point isn’t to memorize every setting in the system.

It’s to understand the system well enough that you can predict what it will do before you change it.

All the best,
A.