Have you ever wondered if your work is meaningful? It might be more important than you think. The story below from our founder, Christian Guissendoerfer, offers a perspective on what it really means to optimize business software. And it's not just about ROI.

When the mower grinded to a halt for the tenth time, I kicked it out of frustration.

“Less of that!” warned my grandpa, bringing out the barbeque. It was summer in Munich 1999, and my whole family had gathered to celebrate my graduation.

My little nephews bounced a football impatiently and tugged at grandpa’s sleeve, asking, “Can we play yet? Can we play yet?”

“Wait for Christian to finish cutting the grass,” he said.

They sarcastically cheered as I started the mower for the seventeenth time. Behind me, a single strip of jaggedly cut grass showed the results of one hour’s labor. That damned lawnmower!

I was most frustrated with the lawnmower as I was the one burdened with using it. Grandad was equally frustrated with it as he had paid for it. My nieces and nephews were frustrated with it too. The frustration was triple layered.

“Just work!” I grunted.

“When can we play!?” whined the kids.

“I only bought it two years ago, and it wasn’t cheap…” moaned grandpa.

The frustration echoed through every cousin who had to redirect a kid bouncing a football off the wall, every aunt that tolerated grandpa’s curt commands for coal, and my girlfriend, who was abandoned to the awkward small talk of my crazy family, waiting for me, throwing glances of desperation my way every time I looked over.

If I could fix it, everyone would be happier, I realized. So I dragged the burdensome beast to our local DIY store, where I knew I’d find that legendary fellow known through the whole village – Handy Jim.

He ran his hands along its side, like a dog show judge. Within a few minutes, he had flipped it over on its side, swapped out an inferior part, cleaned the blades, and given me some tips to prolong its good performance.

When I got home and started it up, it flew out in front of me. Like stepping off an escalator, I felt propelled forth with ease. I zoomed around the garden quicker than the hour-long struggle to mow one strip had made me think possible. In twenty-five minutes, the job was done.

I was smiling ear to ear when I turned to see my grandpa lighting up the barbeque and returning the same smile. The kids charged onto the lawn, kicking the football. Burger smoke filled the air.

Fixing a sub-optimal tool is not just about the tool. Optimization goes beyond better mechanics and efficiency gains. Goes beyond pleasing the client who brought you the problem. The benefits spread out much further.

With any business tool, as with the lawnmower, there is always an owner who funds the tool (i.e. my grandpa), a team burdened with using the tool (i.e. me), and a customer for whom the tool is used (i.e. my nieces and nephews). There is, of course, the wider network of people (i.e. my whole family party) who depend on the satisfaction of the three parties listed above.

All are made happier when the tool works better.

Yes, its encouraging to know that the CRO who contacted us for AI-powered lead scoring is now happily getting a better ROI on their HubSpot subscription. But it's even more encouraging to know that the sales and marketing teams are more happily working with the tool day-to-day, and their customers are experiencing more relevant and interesting customer journeys as a result. By extension, everyone in their corporate environment is contagiously infected by this happiness, as my whole family was when I finally got that damned lawnmower to work.

When a tool is so instrumental to a business's operations, optimizing it truly does make everyone happier.

In my experience, a business flowing with such positivity invariably does better than one clogged up with frustration over a suboptimal tool.

Remember this the next time that you’re optimizing a CRM or improving any tool in your personal or professional life, and wondering if your work is meaningful.

Everyone’s Happier When Tools Work Better.