I’ve been told that my happiness is complicated. I frequently want two mutually exclusive things.

Case in point: I want a car that gets great gas mileage (or is electric even) and can tow a 13,000-pound trailer. Unfortunately for me, that’s just not the way the world works.

The Myth of Having it All

In my role as a technical consultant for my clients, it becomes one of my responsibilities to help them evaluate such decisions in their projects. When I guide a client through a Web Content Management System selection process, I have to determine where they fall on many factors before I am able to determine what solution is the best fit for them. Licensing budget is one factor. Existing technical expertise is another. Level of expected support is another. Hosting plans are another.

Selecting a WCMS based on price alone can, and has, led to problems downstream.

The right solutions are the ones that achieve the optimal balance between all of these factors. Unfortunately, this often feels like no one “wins” and everyone has to accept a compromise.

It feels that way because that is exactly what is happening.

It crops up in lots of different places and ways, too. Where this can get tricky for us, and for our clients, is when different “bosses” have different priorities.

When Priorities Collide

If the CIO says we need maximum security, but the CMO says that the CIO’s requested practices will compromise the “wow” factor of the site, we have to navigate these competing priorities.

If one marketing team member wants a detailed Google Tag Manager tracking code that gives deep, complex analytics about visitor behaviors, and another wants to optimize page load speeds (which are mainly impacted by that complex GTM code), we have to negotiate compromises.

If the in-house designer wants impactful visuals on all pages, but the people who will be populating the content aren’t comfortable with design tools and want an easy-to-populate system that doesn’t require multiple versions of the same image, we have to mitigate this as part of the build.

So many times in the lifecycle of a web ecosystem, these trade-off discussions need to happen. In order to get to the best possible version of what your ecosystem could be, we have to review what these competing requirements are and determine what is institutionally the real priority.

The real struggle is that, when looked at in a vacuum, each person’s request is completely reasonable, but when factored against all the other requests, that’s when making decisions can be difficult.

That’s where we are in a unique position.

While we care deeply about the success of each of our clients, and we like to say that we’re a part of your team, what success looks like to us lacks the narrow focus that individual requirements can foster. We can step back from the discussion about accurate analytics and page speeds and ask the question no one else is asking, because it is one level up.

The question isn’t whether analytics or page speed is important. The question is which is more important for your institution’s goals, and what trade-offs you’re willing to make to achieve it.

Zooming Out for the Bigger Picture

That’s often where organizations get stuck. Not because they lack good ideas, but because they have too many good ideas competing for the same resources, budget, time, and attention.

Our role is to help bring clarity to those discussions. To identify competing priorities, understand trade-offs, and help stakeholders make intentional decisions that support the organization’s broader goals.

You may not be able to have the website equivalent of a fuel-efficient truck that can tow 13,000 pounds. But with the right conversations and a clear understanding of your priorities, you can build a solution that delivers what matters most.