It's the Stockholm Syndrome in which a hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker regardless of the danger. Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of publisher William Randolf Hearst, gained notoriety in 1974 when she was kidnapped and participated in a bank robbery. Are you a hostage to your computer, a slave to your system or vendor? Think about it..
No one wants to be viewed as making a bad decision, so people tend to justify a purchase by looking at the positive and ignoring the negative. Or they become advocates for their captors to court favors or to protect their investment. Of course, there are also people who only look at the negative but realize they are a hostage and constantly complain about it.
CIO's who realize that they are locked into solutions (because the cost of switching is too high or there is no other choice) can still influence the future rather than merely submit to it. It may require a longer term plan that includes adding more choice or flexibility. Industry standards must be part of that plan and customers should not settle for arcane proprietary interfaces that even make the vendor hostage because of their inability to change.
There is plenty of lip service about customer focus today. American Express has members; look at your card. And large IT providers have partners. But no matter how you slice it, there's a dog and then there's a tail. But the tail can wag the dog (1997 Dustin Hoffman). No system is perfect, so it makes sense to always be somewhat dissatisfied with the status quo. It doesn't sound like fun, but quite honestly, you'll never change the landscape unless you can be constructively rebellious. It's quite obvious to others that we're hostages. It's how we behave that defines us, our reputation and our legacy with the organizations that we serve. See Video
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