What Leaders Get Wrong About “People–Process–Technology”

The Framework Everyone Quotes, Few Understand, and Many Misuse

Sometimes in leadership meetings discussing the tangible steps needed to turn a strategy plan into actual results someone in the room often pipes up with “People-Process-Technology” with a knowing shrug. As if to say, ‘We’ve already know how to solve this.’

Maybe I’m inferring something not intended, but it’s come up several times in the past year, and I can’t shake the feeling that those throwing out those three words think they’ve already learned the universal master combination to unlock effective strategy execution.

Useful, but not the universal answer many seem to believe

Most leaders have come across some version of the People–Process–Technology (PPT) triad at a conference or in a slide deck at some point in their careers. It sounds complete, almost elemental. You can slip it into any conversation and feel like you’re contributing something sensible.

That’s part of the problem.

PPT gets treated as if it’s the cure-all for whatever problem happens to be on the table. Growth stalls? Must be a people, process, or technology issue. Customer experience slipping? Same diagnosis. Innovation feels slow? Yeah, yeah, we got this.

It’s become a reflex. And reflexes are a poor substitute for critical thinking.

My view is simple: People–Process–Technology is an operations framework. It is not a strategy framework. It tells you how to refine what already exists, not how to choose what should exist in the first place.

When used in the right setting, it’s a solid way to diagnose execution gaps. Used in the wrong setting, it narrows the conversation to the point that leaders end up optimizing the past instead of creating the future.

Where PPT actually works

People–Process–Technology emerged from operations management and early enterprise IT work as a practical way to make decisions stick. The core idea is simple: execution fails when people, workflows, and systems are misaligned.

It works best in environments where direction is already clear and the challenge is reliability, scale, and consistency.

What it does not address is decision-making itself. It assumes the right choices have already been made. It optimizes execution while leaving strategy untouched.

When a team already has clear strategic choices about where they’re playing, how they intend to win, and what differentiates them, PPT can help translate those choices into reliable execution.

At its best, it pushes leaders to ask grounded questions:

• Do we have the right people with the authority, incentives, and clarity to do the work?

• Are the processes aligned with the outcomes we want, or are they designed for a world that no longer exists?

• Is technology supporting the work or complicating it?

That’s a very useful lens. It exposes friction and surfaces weak handoffs. It forces teams to confront bottlenecks that slow them down or create waste. If you’re tuning a car that’s already pointing in the right direction, PPT helps you tune it well.

What’s missing from PPT is decision-making itself.

Where PPT falls short

The trouble starts when leaders apply PPT to problems it was never built to solve. I see this all the time in strategy sessions. A team will raise a big challenge like new competitive pressure, shifting customer behavior, or a stagnant value proposition and someone will say, “This is a people, process, or technology issue".

It sounds comforting because it shrinks a complex strategic problem into a neat operational box. But that’s usually when the conversation goes off the rails.

• People: Leaders too often default to training, headcount, or reorganizations. They rarely examine decision rights, incentives, or unintended internal culture. The conversation becomes about staffing the current model, not challenging whether the model still makes sense.

• Process: Teams focus on streamlining workflows without asking whether the underlying work is still relevant. They perfect steps that may no longer create value.

• Technology: The easiest trap. Every major transformation gets reinterpreted as a technology problem. Tools are added, stacked, integrated, or “modernized” without clear strategic intent. Technology becomes the strategy rather than an enabler of it.

In each case, PPT pulls leaders toward improving what they already do. That’s useful operationally, but it’s not leadership.

Leadership is about making choices and aligning resources to support those choices. It requires a view on where value will be created next, not just how to do a little better at creating yesterday’s value.

Why leaders cling to PPT anyway

1. It feels actionable. Strategy is uncomfortable. It forces teams to confront trade-offs, uncertainty, and risk. PPT offers the opposite—something concrete, tidy, and familiar.

2. It provides political cover. Saying “we have a process problem” is safer than admitting “we aren’t clear on our strategy” or “we don’t agree on how we win.” PPT lets people avoid the harder work.

3. It rewards operational thinkers. Many leaders grew up running units, managing teams, or fixing broken workflows. PPT fits their muscle memory. In moments of ambiguity, people revert to what they know.

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Operational strength can mask strategic drift.

Executional excellence only matters once you know what you’re executing.

PPT helps you run the play. It can’t help you choose the play.

When leaders blur this distinction, they end up with organizations that are efficient at the wrong things.

This is why we see banks tinkering around the edges on products tied to declining markets and optimizing workflows that don’t create meaningful value.

Efficiency does not compensate for lack of clarity on direction.

So how should leaders use PPT today?

I’m not an operations or IT specialist, but here’s how I see PPT used most productively in leadership settings. Use it after strategic choices are clear, not before. If your team hasn’t agreed on the few things you must win at, PPT will only accelerate confusion.

1. Use it to test alignment. When strategy says one thing and people, processes, or technology suggest another, you’ve found a gap worth fixing.

2. Use it to surface real constraints. Sometimes the barrier isn’t vision, it’s execution. PPT is sharp at exposing execution barriers.

3. Don’t let it shrink the conversation. If a strategic question gets reduced to PPT language too early, pause. Ask whether the team is avoiding the harder question.

   
   

The real opportunity

PPT is not wrong. It’s just often misused when leaders treat it as a framework for everything.  Strategy works outside-in, starting with customers and which choices create value.

Most leaders don’t misuse PPT on purpose. It’s habit. And it’s easy to confuse habit with truth.

Don’t discard PPT, reposition it. Make strategy the compass and use executional and operational outcome excellence to shorten the trip.