The Basics Are Not Beneath You

Most things worth doing are simple.

Not easy. Simple.

A healthy body. Financial stability. Strong relationships. The principles aren’t complicated — consistency, attention, honest feedback, and a willingness to adjust when something isn’t working. Most people know this. Most people also skip it. They look for the sophisticated approach. The advanced framework. The shortcut that justifies bypassing the fundamentals.

Successful ERP implementations follow the same logic. Learn the basics. Apply them consistently. Observe what’s actually happening. Refine. Repeat.

The principle is the same across all of it. The discipline required to follow it is also the same.

So why do so many ERP programs fail?

The Executive Assumption

Here is what I observe, consistently, across programs that drift into trouble.

Executives assume they already know the basics.

That assumption is the problem. Not the vendor. Not the software. Not the implementation team — though the team will carry the weight of the failure when it arrives.

The assumption shows up in four specific behaviours:

We tell more than we listen. A steering committee is not a reporting session. It is a diagnostic session. The executive’s job is to ask the questions that surface what the status report is hiding — not to confirm what the project team already believes. When executives do most of the talking, they forfeit the one thing their position gives them: the ability to hear the truth before it becomes a crisis.

We keep ourselves busy with optimistic views. Optimism is not a governance strategy. A project that looks fine in every report while quietly accumulating scope creep, unresolved decisions, and vendor dependency is not a healthy project — it is a project where the reporting has been calibrated to match the executive’s mood. If the news is always good, the system is broken, not the news.

We give raw, untested decisions. Executives are expected to make decisions. What is less understood is that the quality of executive decisions in ERP programs depends almost entirely on the quality of information feeding those decisions. When an executive arrives at a steering committee without having read the materials, without independent visibility, and without a clear framework for what they’re governing — the decisions they make are not informed. They are instinctive. And instinct, applied to complex technology programs mid-delivery, tends to produce expensive mistakes.

We confuse presence with governance. Attending a steering committee is not the same as governing a program. Signing off on a status report is not oversight. These are motions. Real governance requires a clear standard — defined in advance — for what executive control is supposed to look like. Without it, there is nothing to hold the line on when the program starts to drift.

No Wonder

And then we wonder why ERP projects fail.

No wonder.

We haven’t followed the basics.

A healthy body requires consistent attention to fundamentals — sleep, nutrition, movement — not just when something goes wrong, but as a standing discipline. A financially stable organisation requires consistent attention to cash flow, not just at year-end. Strong relationships require consistent honesty, not just during conflict.

ERP governance is no different.

The basics are not beneath you. They are the work. The discipline of showing up with independent information, asking uncomfortable questions, and holding a defined standard — that is what executive governance actually looks like. It is not glamorous. It does not require a sophisticated framework. It requires consistency, honesty, and the willingness to hear things you would rather not.

Most programs that drift into failure do not lack sophisticated technology. They lack executives who were willing to follow the basics — consistently, honestly, and before the cost of correction became too high.

The principle is simple. Applying it requires something harder than intelligence.

It requires discipline.

SP Singh is the founder of Bhani Consulting, providing independent ERP oversight and advisory to WA local government and Aboriginal corporations. He writes daily at spsingh.me.