By Urban Gavelin, , Sales Leadership & Strategic Blind Spots
We Are the Worst Judges of What We're Standing In
This is a story where I was wrong and my boss was right. I'm telling it anyway, because it says something about how bad we are at judging what we're standing in the middle of. And right now, most of us are standing in the middle of something.
A Story Where My Boss Was Right
I was global product manager for digital products at Kodak, based at headquarters in Rochester, New York. I led a project on a scanner, and later several more. I believed in them. People had old film photos and wanted them digitized. The need was real.
Ahead of a budget review, I sat with my boss and went through research and development costs against the revenue we could expect. He convinced me there was no future in scanners.
He was right.
Scanners Existed Because Film Existed
As long as people needed to digitize old photos, scanners were necessary. But once the camera itself became digital, there was nothing left to scan. The entire chain became digital from the start, and the scanner turned into a footnote.
What's uncomfortable is that I should have seen it coming. I had even helped launch the first digital system camera available for purchase, at a trade show in Germany. I had stood on a stage with the very thing that would make scanners obsolete, and still missed where it was heading.
It wasn't a lack of knowledge. It was that I was standing in the middle of it. The deeper you are inside something, the worse you are at seeing that it's running out.
The Question That Changes the Answer
I've thought a lot about what my boss did differently. He asked a different question. I calculated what the scanners delivered today. He calculated what they would deliver a few years from now. Same numbers, different horizon.
Knowing you have a bias isn't enough. You have it anyway. What helps is someone asking the horizon question when you won't ask it yourself.
Where Are the Scanners in Your Sales Organization?
I think about this when I talk to sales leaders about AI today. The question is rarely whether the technology works. The question is which parts of your current way of working are scanners: things that exist and feel necessary only because an older system requires them.
Meeting notes written up by hand afterward. Data moved between systems by people. Weekly meetings where numbers are read aloud that everyone could already see. Reports built so someone further up the chain can read them. All of it has been necessary. None of it says anything about whether it will still be necessary in three years.
The person who built the way of working is the worst placed to judge it. That was me with the scanners. It's probably you with something in your own organization. Here's what to do about it this week:
- Write down the three steps in your sales process that take the most time. For each one, ask: does this exist because the customer needs it, or because a system needs it?
- Ask my boss's question at your next budget meeting: what will this deliver in three years, not what does it deliver today?
- Ask someone outside the team to assess the thing you're most confident about. The person standing in the middle sees it worst.
- Choose one thing you would stop investing in if you started from zero today. Start there.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is a scanner in a sales organization?
It's any process, tool, or habit that exists and feels indispensable only because an older system demands it. Scanners made sense when film was the standard, but once cameras went digital, the need disappeared. In sales, a scanner might be manual data entry, a weekly status meeting, or a report built for someone else's convenience rather than the customer's need.
Why is it so hard to see these outdated processes from the inside?
The closer you are to something, the less distance you have to judge whether it's still serving a purpose. That's exactly what happened to me with the scanners at Kodak. An outside perspective, whether it's a different horizon question or a reviewer who isn't invested in the current way of working, catches what expertise alone will miss.