The two-tool test · Blue-Line Systems Lab

Joseph Digangi

2d • The Toolkit

The two-tool test

Quick one for the weekend.

Think about the last two pieces of software you bought for your business.

For each one, answer honestly: what did you stop

doing after you bought it?

Not what it added. What it replaced.

If the answer is "nothing, it's just there now," you didn't solve a problem. You added a place where work can go and not come back.

This is the most common pattern I see. A tool gets bought to fix something, the old way never actually stops, and now there are two versions of the same process running at once. The spreadsheet is still open. The group chat is still where decisions actually get made. The CRM has the official record and the real record lives somewhere else.

Nobody decides to run two systems. It happens because deleting the old one requires a decision nobody makes.

So the weekend question: which of your tools didn't replace anything?

That's usually the first place to look.

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The two-tool test