How adding more tools, platforms, and solutions creates complexity even when the goal is simplicity
In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Greed is not just wanting money. It’s something more profound. It’s not being able to let go. The constant need to gather. The idea that more will fix what is already broken. It is this urge to fill in that empty hole in your chest.
This understanding of greed changes how we think about the legacy CIO who failed dramatically in this aspect. This behavior is surprisingly common. It shows up not in the pursuit of money, but in the pursuit of solutions. And it creates a problem that many organizations struggle to resolve.
The Language of Simplification
The legacy CIOs talk about making things easier. “We have to make things less complicated.” “We need to simplify our landscape.” “We should consolidate our systems.” These words are correct. They sound like a plan. They sound like they care. Leaders use them in town halls and boardrooms.
But in many companies, the opposite is true. While people talk about making things easier, they are actually making them harder. The words say one thing, but the choices say something else. And over time, the difference between what legacy CIOs say and do becomes too big to ignore.
The Pattern of Accumulation
The Legacy CIO does not make things easier. They build up. A new tool is added to fix a problem. To please a stakeholder, another platform is added. A new system is put in place to work with a business unit. Each choice makes sense on its own. Every request seems important. It seems like each addition is needed.
But things are rarely taken away. The group never asks, “What are we turning off?” “What are we retiring?” “What are we consolidating?” Over time, applications that do the same thing start to show up. There are more and more duplicated capabilities. There are more and more layers of integration. And what was once manageable becomes fragile. The architecture that was supposed to help the business ends up being a burden.
This pattern isn’t always technical. It is often a matter of politics. A senior business leader requests a tool. A powerful department demands a platform. A global initiative introduces a new system. From a technical perspective, these aren’t always the best choices, but they are important.
Instead of questioning the need, the Legacy CIO accepts it. Not because it is the right thing to do. But only because it’s easier. Saying yes prevents things from escalating. Saying yes makes stakeholders pleased. Saying yes makes it look like things are getting better. The system grows, not because it should, but because no one is brave enough to stop it.
The Absence of Challenge
This is where greed shows up. Not in spending too much, but in accepting too much. There is no challenge to the requirements. There is no questioning of overlap. No assessment of other options. Quick decisions are made. Projects are started. More solutions are added.
But they are not often looked at in depth. The leaders go from meeting to meeting, approving requests and funding projects, but they never stop to think about whether these changes are making things better or worse. The default answer becomes yes. And the enterprise architecture pays the price.
The Missing Discipline
Modern technology leadership requires discipline. Every decision should be guided in my opinion by three questions.
- What problem are we solving?
- Do we already have a capability for this?
- What will we remove if we add this?
These questions are often skipped. Instead, the organization moves forward with solution-first thinking. A problem appears, and the immediate response is to find a new tool. There is no pause to understand whether an existing tool could solve the problem. There is no discipline for removal, or what I like to call “digital minimalism,” in IT organizations. The default is to add, not to consolidate.
The Real Cost
This makes it look like something bad is happening. Change is happening on paper. More and more things are possible. You can see innovation. The organization can point to new systems and investments. It seems like things are getting better.
In fact, systems are getting heavier. Architecture is getting harder to understand. Delivery is taking longer. The organization feels like it’s progressing because it’s busy, but it also feels like it’s stuck because it’s tangled. Instead of building new features, teams spend more time managing integrations. The illusion of simplification hides the truth of accumulation.
The effects of this pattern are not immediate, but they are structural. The first cost is that things are getting more complicated. New systems introduce new dependencies and interactions that require management. It becomes harder to understand and change the architecture. Delivery takes longer after that. Teams spend more time putting systems together than adding new features. What should take weeks takes months. Things that should be easy get challenging.
Cost goes up over time. Licensing, maintenance, and support all grow. The company pays for unnecessary tools, duplicate features, and systems that were added but never removed.
The chance of something breaking goes up. More systems mean more ways for hackers to get in. More integrations mean more places where things can go wrong. And most importantly, the architecture is less clear. The organization becomes weak when no one knows how the parts fit together.
Technology does not make things more complicated. It comes from choices. Every “yes” makes it heavier. Every new system makes things dependent on it. Every time you add something without taking something else away, the architecture gets harder to manage. The problem isn’t technology. The problem is that you can’t say no.
Being greedy as a leader doesn’t mean getting more. It is about not taking away. It’s about saying yes too many times. It’s about not having hard talks. And it’s about thinking that doing things is the same as making progress. Being busy doesn’t mean you’re getting things done. Adding solutions does not mean that problems are solved.
From Accumulation to Discipline
The solution is not to stop innovation. The solution is to introduce discipline.
- Subtraction Before Addition: Every time we get a new system, we have to ask ourselves, “What will we get rid of?” If nothing is taken away, things get more complicated by default. Growth is not just adding things; it’s also taking things away. It is gathering.
- Clear Architectural Principles: Define what is allowed, what is not, and what must be replaced. Architecture is not documentation. It is decision-making. Without clear principles, every request becomes an exception.
- Strong Governance: Not every request should be approved. Not every stakeholder demand should be accepted. Governance is not resistance. It is focus. It is the discipline of saying no so that the organization can say yes to what matters.
- Proper Problem Definition
Before any solution, define the real need. Validate the requirement. Explore existing capabilities. Modern CIOs do not implement solutions. They solve problems. - The Leadership Shift: The Legacy CIO asks, “What can we add to solve this?” The modern CIO asks, “what can we remove to simplify this?” This shift is small in language but enormous in impact. One leads to accumulation. The other leads to clarity. One builds complexity. The other builds focus.
Closing Reflection
Dante described greed as the inability to let go. In modern IT leadership, this is described as the inability to stop adding. New systems. New tools. New layers. All introduced with the intention of progress. But without the discipline of removal.
And over time, the result is clear. Complexity grows. Clarity fades. And transformation slows. Not because of lack of effort, but because of lack of restraint. The organization moves quickly in circles, continuously adding new elements without ever stopping to remove those that no longer serve its purpose.
In the next article, we will explore the sixth sin:
Gluttony—Automating Chaos
And how organizations accelerate the wrong processes by applying automation and AI to systems that were never designed to work properly
If this topic resonates with you, I’d love to hear what you think.
In my book Life in the Digital Bubble, I explore how AI and digital systems will reshape not only technology but also work, families, and society in the decades ahead.
And for organizations navigating these changes today, my digital transformation and AI consulting services focus on helping leaders move beyond scattered initiatives and build clear operating models that turn emerging technologies into real business value.