Email Is Not a System
As 2026 approaches, an interesting scary fact recently occurred to me:
I have been working with enterprise systems for three decades and building smaller, bespoke ones for nearly as long.
The word harrowing comes to mind. These days, I'm painfully aware of the fact that I'm no spring chicken.
New Tech. Same Issues.
I no longer work with the same enterprise applications and systems as I did in 1995. ERP stalwarts Lawson and PeopleSoft don't even exist anymore as standalone entities.
Forget enterprise systems for a moment. On a smaller level, I haven't touched Microsoft Access in years. Instead, I develop bespoke solutions for myself and others in Notion. Thanks to artificial intelligence, we can now ask questions of our data using natural language—a pipe dream a decade ago.
The specific technologies change, but one thing never does: imperfections. No system is perfect. Ask different people about their shortcomings, and you'll receive divergent answers. Yeah, many new systems continue to fail. Change management is challenging, even when everyone is ostensibly on board. Software vendors' priorities sometimes vex us. Their salespeople often exaggerate what their wares can do—although they occasionally underpromise.
And yet…
What's the alternative to using proper systems to track essential enterprise data?
Email, I suppose. Blame inertia, aversion to change, or whatever you like.
Travails of a Notion Developer
Over the past few years, a few small organizations have flirted with me about building a better mousetrap. (I'll focus below on the ones that said no.)
A publishing group, a VC firm, and a prominent ghostwriting agency come to mind. Neither one employed more than a few dozen employees. “No thanks,” each told me in so many words. “We'll continue relying on employee inboxes to manage key business processes.”
No system means no answers.
These firms didn't reject Notion in favor of another solution. Ditto for me in favor of another developer—at least as far as I can tell. Rather, they spurned the very idea that they needed a system at all.
As a result, I'll bet my house that these firms cannot easily determine:
- Their current pipelines.
- Where all of their existing projects stand.
- Why their different efforts succeeded and failed.
- How much time they have wasted on duplicate efforts.
You know, little things.
Phil Simon
Simon Says
Perhaps the new year will convince hidebound folks at laggard firms that it's finally time to embrace the 21st century. Just because you can work from your inboxes doesn't mean you should.
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