Good Digital Support Should Eventually Make Itself Unnecessary
I’ve finally found a way of articulating something I’ve believed for a very long time.
If I do my job properly, eventually you should need less of me.
That’s possibly an odd thing to say when you’re trying to sell coaching, consulting and digital support.
But I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with a model of digital support that creates dependency.
Because surely the point is to leave somebody more capable than when you found them?
Start with the person and the problem
Someone comes to me and says: “I think I need SEO.”
My first job isn’t to sell them SEO.
It’s to ask:
Why do you think you need it?
What are you trying to achieve?
What’s happening now?
What evidence do you have?
What have you already tried?
The answer might be SEO but it might not.
That’s the idea at the heart of what we’ve started calling the Human First Principle:
Start with the person and the problem. Then decide what role digital should play.
From pressure to independence
I’ve been mapping the way this actually works, and it looks remarkably consistent
Something creates Pressure.
We create Clarity about what’s actually happening.
We understand the Capability that’s already there and what’s missing.
We create enough Control to try something sensibly.
Then we create Movement.
We observe what happens.
And gradually we build towards Independence.
Independence doesn’t mean doing everything yourself
I don’t want small business owners maintaining servers, becoming technical SEO specialists or learning every aspect of AI simply to prove they’re independent.
Sometimes the intelligent decision is: I understand this well enough to know that I want an expert to do it.
That’s still control.
Independence means knowing enough to understand what you’re buying, why you’re buying it and what good should look like.
It means being able to ask questions, challenge assumptions, read some of the evidence and recognise when something doesn’t feel right.
Which changes my job too
Sometimes my role is Coach.
Sometimes Consultant.
Sometimes Teacher.
Sometimes Sense-checker.
Sometimes I need to bring somebody with much deeper specialist expertise into the room.
Sometimes the most useful thing I can say is: Don’t spend any money on this yet.
The role changes because the problem changes.
The principle doesn’t.
The goal is to get out of the room
That, for me, is the ultimate test of Human First Digital support.
Did this leave you clearer?
More capable?
More confident?
More in control?
Better able to make the next decision?
If the answer is yes, then at some point my job is to back out of the room and leave you to get on with it.
And if another problem appears later?
Bring me the problem. We’ll start again.