Integration strategy: Avoiding the post-acquisition cliff Growing through acquisition is a strategy. Integrating through acquisition is a different one. Eighteen months after closing a deal, the gap between those two strategies shows up. Not as a crisis, but as a slow softening. Win rates that don’t quite hit the model. Customer relationships that feel fussier than they used to. Campaigns that...
The ERP is the easy part: Navigating implementation gaps ERP implementations rarely cover the custom workflows — like configurator logic, complex quoting, and dealer portals — that keep your manufacturing business running. Identify and plan for those integration gaps before go-live.
The AI pilot was never the problem The AI pilot stalled. Or it shipped, but nobody uses it. Maybe it generated numbers that sit on a dashboard nobody trusts, next to the spreadsheet the team actually opens every Monday. This is the conversation we have most often with operators running AI initiatives right now. A pilot got funded, a model got tuned,...
🕒 A Clockwork Minute: The developer’s superpower Oh, happy New Year! We’ve made it through the first couple of weeks of 2026, which is starting to feel a lot like 2025. 😬 Anyway, in this Clockwork Minute, we’re talking about superpowers. At Clockwork, we talk a lot about empathy — the greatest superpower of them all. Not the vague, feel-good kind, but...
How change management unlocks innovation Why does it feel like innovation initiatives never go anywhere? We all know that innovation is a key driver of organizational success. I don’t think I’ve worked anywhere over the last 20+ years that didn’t have initiatives dedicated to it. From continuous improvement incentives to design thinking squads, across industries and departments (and decades), great...
The role of WIIFM in driving real, long-term adoption Organizations are constantly in flux thanks to market shifts, leadership directives, employee feedback, and competitive pressure. These forces may be external or internal, urgent or strategic, but they all lead to the same next steps: a decision made, a meeting held, and a project in motion. While a project may be imperative to its stakeholders,...
🕒 A Clockwork Minute: Cohesion without compromise A one-minute look at work in motion. Welcome to our new regular series: A Clockwork Minute. In this series, we’ll be sharing snapshots of work in progress and how we’re solving problems real-time for our clients. We’re redesigning the website of a large Midwest county government, bringing County, Parks, and Library together under one roof....
What is experience design? Most people think of experience design as buttons, screens, or branding. But the real magic is bigger than that. It’s the intentional craft of shaping how people move through your business and how they feel while they’re doing it. When you design with people at the center, you don’t just get a smoother product. You...
Why phasing matters in product modernization Bad technology choices aren’t the reason most product modernization efforts fail. They don’t work because they try to do too much, too fast. When organizations rush to rebuild everything at once, it leads to overwhelm and false starts. Phasing breaks this cycle. It transforms modernization from a risky, all-or-nothing bet into a series of validated...
Activating change champions: A blueprint for engagement We’ve all experienced it: a significant change is rolled out, and it feels like it came out of nowhere. What’s the first thing we do? We turn to someone we trust, a peer who can help us make sense of it all. Now imagine if that peer had been involved from the start. They could...
