Technology arguments that are really about politics and positioning

This is when a person or group of people within a customer organization are strongly pushing a particular technology and putting us on the back foot. In these situations it helps to step back and look at their underlying motivations.

An example of this is with a customer we had that had made an acquisition of a startup that was using Mirth for their interfacing. As we know when there is an acquisition then there is generally a fair bit of money and security at stake for competing people in the combined entity. These are typical issues at stake:

• Will I get let go? i.e. part of downsizing duplicate functions

• Who get’s the top roles (power + $$$) in the new combined organization?

In this case the group in the acquired entity was making a lot of noise about the need to shift to using a container technology called Docker.

So while the words might be about technology, the real discussion is about money and power. When faced with this pattern what you don’t want to do is let the anti Iguana group control the narrative (i.e. try and show how Iguana can work with Docker). This is an absolute strategic mistake since instead the goal should be to shift the narrative to one where we dominate the conversation with logic.

So it comes back to looking at the bigger frame - engaging management and shifting the conversation to topics where we win - namely looking at budget and showing how we can give our customers scaleable repeatable business models which enable them to solve the problems that should be more top of mind - i.e. the success of the entire organization - not the success of special interests within the organization.