Driven By Potential
The lens through which we choose to view the world determines how we leave our mark on it.
At ASBML, we believe that the values and principles that drive us as leaders should shine through the purpose and mission of the company. That’s what makes an organization authentic and maximizes its potential impact. We thrive on helping companies find and nurture this connection through transforming their technology strategy.
Everyone has a “why.” My “why” is the reason I get up in the morning, what pushes me to keep striving through the hard times, what helps me focus on what really matters in my life. For many years, my “why” was to make positive change in the world. I wanted to know that no matter what I did, I was making things a little better than I found them. More recently, I’ve started to notice a deeper “why” for myself: a drive to see and reach toward the potential in myself and others. A desire to stretch myself beyond what’s comfortable, and through action, inspire those around me to do the same.
This has shown up in different ways in my life: setting tough athletic goals, becoming a more vulnerable leader, having difficult (but needed) conversations with important people in my life. All of which were really hard, and if I’m being honest, in my moments of exhaustion, felt insurmountable. Inevitably, though, I would come out of the darkness and into the light. I’ve come to realize the contrast of light and dark in our lives is absolutely necessary to embrace our potential and ascend new heights . . . or to use the language of tech, to optimize the total human experience.
Optimizing ASMBL
I started to consider my company’s performance and productivity, as well as our clients’, through this lens. How could we optimize our business, making ourselves and our clients more effective? What would it mean to do this? I listened intently to our partners, clients, and employees—amazing leaders who have a vision for the future that is inspiring, energizing, and expansive.
We spend our days creating unique solutions that not only address complicated technology problems but lift organizations toward their full potential.
To a person, their vision is the reason they started their business, took on their role, or continue to push forward with new projects. The commonality I heard from all of these people was that they didn’t have enough time and they were exhausted by all the distractions, mentally draining tasks, and mile-long to-do lists.
So the question for me was, What would happen if all of these incredible leaders had time to build or create what they believed mattered most? How would it change their companies? Their communities? If they started to focus on the potential of what could be rather than the problems they had, would those problems start to dissolve, naturally? I believe the answer is yes, and this is what ASMBL is here to prove.
ASMBL’S Pivot
We spend our days creating unique solutions that not only address complicated technology problems but lift organizations toward their full potential. At our core, we believe that technology and humanity go hand in hand. The intention of technology is to make people's lives better. It’s to help us become more efficient and productive, giving us time to do what matters most to us.
But the reality of the experience is often the exact opposite. People are drowning in ineffective, complicated tech that has taken them away from their mission. They are still spending hours pulling together reports, and gathering data from different sources, completing tasks that provide limited value to the growth of the company, implementing new tools to offset the others that don’t quite cut it, and spending more money than they can afford. There is a technology hang-over that needs to end.
So, what can we do about it?
To meet this moment, I have been leading ASMBL on a journey to sharpen our mission and approach. With the same deep values, engineering excellence, and curiosity that have always grounded our work, ASMBL has pivoted toward a new purpose: unlocking people’s potential to impact the world around them. To do this, we offer three interconnected core services that help us free clients from the burdens of ineffective tech and let them focus on what really matters to their business and their customers.
We began this journey by implementing ten guiding principles that keep us honest with ourselves and with our clients.
Our Guiding Principles
Radical Candor
Tell stakeholders what they need to know, including hard truths.
- Anticipate and calculate costs, loads, risks, and performance.
- Disclose limitations, anywhere we find them.
- Measure and monitor as part of any solution.
Harmonized business architecture
Converge the agendas of users and stakeholders.
- Assess the user experience as the measure of quality.
- Assess tech burden and process debt as the measures of value.
- Assess the mental load for each stakeholder as the measure of performance.
Technology as a craft
Use solutioning to fulfill people’s potential.
- Make stakeholder needs explicit, and fulfill them.
- Explore disruptive options, and simplify what’s worked in the past.
Conscious resourcing
Build to sustain.
- Assess the impact on people and planet.
- Plan for scalability and longevity.
Transforming Your Business
Tech goes beyond the transactional when it meaningfully impacts your life, offers deeper interaction, and elevates how your employees and customers experience your business or service. But it’s a two-way mirror: You can’t just transform your tech infrastructure, you have to transform the business operations around it. Papering over issues with new technology often leads to the very problems the leaders and visionaries I spoke to were experiencing. But making the transactional transformational enables new processes and strategies that lead to growth and fulfill previously unseen potential. Our consultancy considers all of these needs.
That’s why ASMBL offers three integrated core services that together form the basis of transformational tech: data activation, experience design, and business optimization. Using our guiding principles as our north star and the rubric for every client engagement, we help clients imagine what’s possible and then focus on delivery in these three camps.
We have found that when we work with clients in this way, with an overarching vision and strategy for the business supported by these concrete tech optimizations, our clients are able to grow and scale more effectively and sustainably. They decrease expenses and increase productivity, driving results that lead to higher profitability and improved customer and employee satisfaction. This is our “why”—enabling our clients to unlock their potential.
Every consultancy has a “how” for delivering services, but our "why” is intentional and meaningful, and it makes our “how” more effective. Not just for us, but for the many businesses that we’re able to provide true transformation for along the way. We believe in making sustainable change that betters our world, and we invite you to join us in this mission.
Transformation is our business. Let’s work together.
To learn about our services in more depth, explore the deep-dive posts our team has written.