Recent Posts by Peter Armaly

When a comedian is on stage and the punchline he’s practiced for a week is met with stony stares from the audience, what’s that sound he hears? Besides the random uncomfortable cough from an audience member, the sound he hears is probably his heart constricting and his cortisol levels rising. It’s at that time when a person fully understands the expression, “The silence was deafening”. For your business, silence can be a sign of trouble. Your community of customers should be a...

If you work in high tech, or even if you don’t, you would probably nod your head if asked whether the following is on the top five list of most asked questions. Is artificial intelligence (AI) a good thing or a bad thing?  AI is a hot topic and it’s probably because, as with any subject where potential impact is mostly unknown but highly anticipated, a broad spectrum of scenarios has been imagined resulting in an equally broad set of predicted outcomes. Whether it will be seen...

At this time of year, we all have a tendency to look back and assess the past 12 months. So, I’d like to take the opportunity to touch on something my thoughts have increasingly been returning to in the latter half of 2018. Talent I’m referring to talent that runs towards the cerebral, analytical, and smoothly efficient. You know, the kind of talent not usually profiled in glossy online business magazines or ever considered eligible for company awards. Yet this kind of...

If you work in high tech, or even if you don’t, you would probably nod your head if asked whether the following is on the top five list of most asked questions. Is artificial intelligence (AI) a good thing or a bad thing?  AI is a hot topic and it’s probably because, as with any subject where potential impact is mostly unknown but highly anticipated, a broad spectrum of scenarios has been imagined resulting in an equally broad set of predicted outcomes. Whether it will be seen...

Way back in the Mesozoic Period of IT (about 1989) I had a boss who, while clenching a lit cigar between his teeth (yes, there was that back then), uttered these immortal words, “Your job is to automate yourself out of a job.” That master of inspirational communications was on to something. He seemed to believe in motivating his people by obviating the eventual need for ever having to have us around. At first, it was confusing, I’ll admit that, but after a while it made sense....

“We tend to fight the next war in the same way we fought the last one. We are prisoners of our own experience.” Sam Wilson, Lieutenant General US Army He spoke those words a few years before the Vietnam War plummeted to its nadir (from America’s perspective). The conflict was gradually slipping out of control of the US government and a thought was emerging amongst a circle of military leaders, troubling and difficult for many to accept, that the US involvement had been...

There exists probably no more despised phrase in the Customer Success lexicon than “one throat to choke”. Ironically, it’s often used in a positive, inspirational way, as in, “This is critical. You’re our best and we need to prevent that customer from defecting. We’re going to give them one throat to choke. You.” As if what customers really desire is to commit an act of murder. They don’t. What they really want is for the products to work and that they live up to even half the...

You’re a customer of business software. Your company spent a lot of money on a product it hopes will improve the speed with which you do your job. Um, great. Pressure. Spotlight. Those things you try to avoid. You think to yourself, “Why is it me who’s under the gun?” Which leads you to ask, “Isn’t this a two-way street?” Then you say, with some irritation: It would help if the vendor would improve the speed at which I could learn their product. It would help if the...

  You’re a customer of business software. Your company spent a lot of money on a product it hopes will improve the speed with which you do your job. Um, great. Pressure. Spotlight. Those things you try to avoid. You think to yourself, “Why is it me who’s under the gun?” Which leads you to ask, “Isn’t this a two-way street?” Then you say, with some irritation: It would help if the vendor would improve the speed at which I could learn their product. It would help if the vendor’s...