Are magpies ruining your business?
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^{Written by Jack Hollocks - G&F Client Partner}

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It might seem a little farfetched, but bear with me - it makes sense.

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It’s popular belief that magpies love shiny objects and can’t help themselves from swooping down and grabbing them if they spot them. Much to my disappointment however, this story has been disproved, and they actually hate shiny objects. But, for the purpose of this article, let’s pretend it hasn’t.

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We're all guilty of being attracted to the next new shiny object; whether it's the latest model of iPhone, upgrading your car, or the newest restaurant that you've seen advertised on Instagram. A lot of the time, nothing terrible happens when we crumble and succumb to these temptations.

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The problems begin when you start allowing this to happen within your business. Whether it's trying to crowbar AI into your business, changing your GTM strategy, or releasing new product lines - all can be great things when done well and with the right reasons behind them, but doing them just because somebody else is or they look cutting edge is NOT the right approach.

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An easy target here is AI chatbots: great when done well, more annoying than somebody cutting in front of you at the queue at a supermarket when done badly. Some companies have removed huge numbers of human Customer Service agents to replace them with AI, only to realise they have made a huge mistake and look to reverse what they've done. By this point the damage is done, disgruntled former employees and customers losing faith and going to competitors. Just think about Klarna’s recent backtrack on cutting 700-employees to replace them with AI.

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This kind of misstep highlights a broader principle. A CTO recently shared on LinkedIn that one of their key learnings stepping into the role was: “Try not to make irreversible decisions.” It’s a mindset we feel strongly about at G&F, and one of the reasons we advocate for starting small. Small steps make it easier to test, learn, and pivot, without risking long-term damage.

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If you're building a new product or introducing AI for the first time, it’s a pretty sensible thing to start small and adopt a POC approach – one of our favourite approaches at G&F. It gives you the time to identify business cases, test, feedback and iterate before going with the irreversible decision. It may well be that it doesn’t make sense to take it any further; but thank goodness you know that now and haven’t wasted millions and years of challenges to fix it!

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So, the next time you see the shiny object, feel free to swoop down, but inspect it thoroughly before picking it up and flying off.

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