In 2009, Apple left us with a viral slogan: “.” In the campaign video ads, people kept swiping through an iPhone 3 (yes, that feels like a lifetime ago) and opening apps for pretty much anything—from ringing up sales, to finding a parked car, to checking snow conditions on a mountain.
Two decades later, that revolutionary promise of having everything at your fingertips has spiraled into an overwhelming ecosystem. We now have SaaS tools, PaaS products, IaaS systems, and multiple apps to do slightly different versions of the same thing—which is why you are here, tracking the same project across eight dashboards, and your team can’t figure out which platform is the single source of truth.
More tools ≠ more maturity
Speaking at our recent live session on the future of work,, CEO of mentioned agencies that showcase “50 different tools they use because they’re trying to position themselves as leaders in a category.” The assumption is that the larger your tool stack, the more mature your team must be.
But Burton disagrees. She thinks leaders need to “stop chasing every single shining tool,” because chasing tools without purpose
- Slows your team down
- Makes you overhaul processes for no real gain
- Scatters or obscures vital project information
- Encourages siloed systems or workarounds
The result is a tech stack that creates more problems than it solves. Instead, Burton advocates for curating your toolset with intention: not by chasing features or novelty, but by choosing the solutions that truly fit how your team works.
How to choose the right app for that
So how do you build the right stack? Burton shared a three-step playbook she uses at Instrument to avoid tool fatigue and make sure every product earns its place.
1. Start from what you already have
The first step in choosing a tool is to not pick a new one until you fully explore the capabilities of your current stack.
When Instrument shifted to a hybrid model, leadership decided to reassess how they used some of their existing tools in this new work environment. According to Burton, they had to “slow down, invest into reimagining the way they used [each] tool to help serve [them] into the future.”
In ĸ’s case (hi 👋), they reached out to the customer success team to better understand any under-utilized features and extend the value of a tool they already trusted. You may need to do the same for tools you already have, to see if they can evolve to meet your current needs.
2. Pick tools that match your values
Burton doesn’t just assess functionality—she vets alignment, because she wants “to work with tools that have the same values” as she does.
At Instrument, two of those values are being people-first and having a growth mindset.
- Being people-first means prioritizing trust, flexibility, and autonomy. That’s one reason ĸ remains a tool of choice: they use it to match the right people to the right work (not just whoever is available) without rigid time tracking and micromanagement
- A growth mindset means continuously evolving how the team works and expecting the same from their tools. When a product can’t keep up or forces the team into rigid processes, it doesn’t last. Burton is not afraid to admit they have “sunset previous tools because they were impossible to use, but might work better for a very corporate, rigid type of persona.”
The takeaway: ask yourself, and your team, if the stack you use reflects your core beliefs and can keep up with how your company thinks and operates.
3. Choose tools that solve a problem, not create it
Having worked as a producer for over twenty years, Burton knows “what it’s like when you have tools that work with you [versus] working with a tool that doesn’t do what it needs to do.”
She is, of course, not alone. At our , panelists Justin Watt (Switchboard) and Jacquie Ford (NewsCorp) echoed similar feelings. They shared common examples of when a tool creates more friction than it solves:
- Too complex
- Hard to customize
- No useful data surfaced
- Poor integration
- Doesn’t fit how the organization works
In all our speakers’ experience, the moment a tools introduces unexpected friction is also the moment a team starts reaching for workarounds—and risks losing consistency in the process.
For Burton, this is where leadership needs to actively step in with guidelines, training, and clear direction. “We use a curated set of tools that actually solve problems, not create more of them. And we hold quarterly learning and development sessions to upskill our teams. When you have a curated set of tools, you can actually become an expert in it versus just saying, ‘well, I heard about this new tool and I heard about this tool and this tool and this tool...’.”
The right tool is just the first step
To quote Burton, “the tool is the first step. The imagination and innovation of how it works for your business is the critical standpoint.”
Choosing software is only part of the equation. What matters even more, after, is how you implement, integrate, and train your team. So before adding anything new to your stack, ask:
- How will this fit into our actual workflows?
- How will we onboard the team with intention?
- Will this make decisions easier—or add more noise in the long term?
Answer these questions and you'll be able to build a curated stack of tools that support how you work.
