You Don’t Need a 3-Year Roadmap. You Need Clarity and Capacity.

When I speak to leaders who are thinking about bringing enterprise system changes such as  Salesforce into their organization, there’s usually a moment, just before they say “Yes we need this!!”, where they stop and think about the people involved, wondering how they will find the time and resources to carry out a project.

Not because they don’t believe in technology. Not because the business case isn’t clear. But because they feel they need a fully mapped-out plan before they start.

The truth is, you don’t need a 3-year roadmap to get going. You need something far more practical and powerful: clarity and capacity.

You need to know what matters most to your organization and teams right now. You need to give your team the space to address the issue with Salesforce, as you can solve so many issues with this technology.

“Start with what’s keeping you up at night.”

Forget the 12-point digital strategy. “What’s really bothering you? What’s slowing your team down? What’s the thing you keep thinking there must be a better way to do?” is something I always ask people.

In my opinion, that’s where your Salesforce journey should begin.

When ImagineCRM works with organizations, we often ask this early: If we fixed just one major pain point in the next six months, what would make the biggest difference?

That question gives us a starting point that’s grounded in reality, not a generic implementation plan. From there, we can start creating a system, solution or something that actually works for your staff to alleviate pain points in their process.

You don’t have to fix everything at once. Just choose the right few things that will have the biggest impact!

One of the most common pitfalls leaders fall into is trying to tackle too many things at once. They want to fix programs, reporting, donor management, onboarding, and internal comms, all in one build. I understand the instinct. But the outcome is almost always frustration and fatigue.

Real impact comes from choosing two or three priorities and doing them well. Let your team go deep instead of wide. Create space for proper testing, adoption, and improvement. The rest will come later,  and faster, because you started with focus.

Think: what are the one or two things we could focus on?

Create space. Not another spreadsheet.

Salesforce is not something you can wedge in around the edges. If you’re serious about doing this well, you need to create space, space to plan, space to test, and space to rethink how things get done.

That means stopping some of the work, processes that no longer serves you as you work through this, and on day one, you retire outdated reports. Pause meetings that are no longer productive, and look at new ways with our help to do things, could that meeting be a Slack Channel?

When someone says, “We’ve always done it this way,” use that as rocket fuel to think why that is. 

Innovation doesn’t begin with a tool. It starts with a shift in mindset: a permission to think, breathe, and work differently.

You don’t need to be perfect. You need to begin.

You don’t have to know everything before you start. I think the main thing is knowing that you want to change things to automate, to elevate the way you do things, and  the mindset to think about the ways to make the biggest impact, to create space, name your top priorities, and trust your team to figure things out as they go.

Salesforce is a powerful platform. But the most potent part of any transformation is your people, when they’re given the time and clarity to make change happen.