Even though the Commonwealth’s information technology “isn’t perfect,” (according to David Von Moll, Virginia’s Comptroller, the financial information system isn’t what he would call “functionally rich”) the commitment to capture, analyze and share important data creates an atmosphere of understanding. This in turn helps stakeholders to buy into the mutual goals that are defined by an organization’s diverse operations.
— Procurement Insights, March 4, 2008
I wrote that about the Commonwealth of Virginia, which had just been ranked number one in the PEW Center’s report on managing a state. By its own comptroller’s account, the system it ran on wasn’t even “functionally rich.” Virginia came first anyway — because the technology was never the reason it worked.
Here is the simplest way I know to say the same thing.
You can drive a car with dents and a broken air conditioner.
But if you don’t know how to drive, don’t know where you’re going, and don’t keep watching the road, a brand-new, perfect car will do you very little good. It will sit in the driveway, or it will take you somewhere you never meant to go — faster.
That is the whole of it.
The technology is the car. Knowing how to drive is execution. Knowing where you’re going is alignment on the goal. And staying on route — because even a new car and a good driver can take a wrong turn — is governance, exercised continuously, not set once and forgotten.
Miss any one of those and the destination doesn’t get closer, no matter what you’re driving. And here is what the technology conversation keeps getting backwards: no car, however good, can teach you to drive, choose where you’re going, or tell you you’ve picked the wrong destination. It can navigate flawlessly to the wrong place — which is exactly the problem.
None of this is an argument against a good car. The car matters — a great one gets a skilled driver who knows the route there faster, safer, and further than a dented one ever could. It simply matters after you can drive and know where you’re going, and never as a substitute for either.
That is what I mean by operating logic before technology. It is why the same AI tool produces opposite results in two organizations. And it is, until proven otherwise, the constant I keep coming back to — what I’ve come to call Invariant Physics™.
The car was never the reason you arrived. It was the last thing that had to be true, not the first.
Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing. Outcome Is Proof.™
-30-
Related
A Perfect Car Won’t Get You There
Posted on July 6, 2026
0
Even though the Commonwealth’s information technology “isn’t perfect,” (according to David Von Moll, Virginia’s Comptroller, the financial information system isn’t what he would call “functionally rich”) the commitment to capture, analyze and share important data creates an atmosphere of understanding. This in turn helps stakeholders to buy into the mutual goals that are defined by an organization’s diverse operations.
— Procurement Insights, March 4, 2008
I wrote that about the Commonwealth of Virginia, which had just been ranked number one in the PEW Center’s report on managing a state. By its own comptroller’s account, the system it ran on wasn’t even “functionally rich.” Virginia came first anyway — because the technology was never the reason it worked.
Here is the simplest way I know to say the same thing.
You can drive a car with dents and a broken air conditioner.
But if you don’t know how to drive, don’t know where you’re going, and don’t keep watching the road, a brand-new, perfect car will do you very little good. It will sit in the driveway, or it will take you somewhere you never meant to go — faster.
That is the whole of it.
The technology is the car. Knowing how to drive is execution. Knowing where you’re going is alignment on the goal. And staying on route — because even a new car and a good driver can take a wrong turn — is governance, exercised continuously, not set once and forgotten.
Miss any one of those and the destination doesn’t get closer, no matter what you’re driving. And here is what the technology conversation keeps getting backwards: no car, however good, can teach you to drive, choose where you’re going, or tell you you’ve picked the wrong destination. It can navigate flawlessly to the wrong place — which is exactly the problem.
None of this is an argument against a good car. The car matters — a great one gets a skilled driver who knows the route there faster, safer, and further than a dented one ever could. It simply matters after you can drive and know where you’re going, and never as a substitute for either.
That is what I mean by operating logic before technology. It is why the same AI tool produces opposite results in two organizations. And it is, until proven otherwise, the constant I keep coming back to — what I’ve come to call Invariant Physics™.
The car was never the reason you arrived. It was the last thing that had to be true, not the first.
Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing. Outcome Is Proof.™
-30-
Share this:
Like this:
Related