When I was a kid, I wanted a Swiss Army Knife so bad! It was marketed as being, and I totally believed it was, capable of doing anything. If you were stranded on desert island and all you had was a Swiss Army Knife, you’d be just fine. In fact, you’ll be living like a king in the hut that you constructed with nothing but your Swiss Army Knife. This is the only tool you’ll ever need. A Swiss Army Knife is independence. A Swiss Army Knife is freedom. That was the sentiment among boys my age.

Boy, were we dumb.

When I finally got my first Swiss Army Knife, I quickly found out that it suuuuucked. The actual knife part was functional, but awkward and certainly not as good as a regular pocket knife. The toothpick was ruined the first time I picked my teeth. The tweezers couldn’t grab anything. The leather punch was couldn’t punch leather. The Philips screwdriver was the worst I had ever used and it was still somehow better than the flathead. And a corkscrew? On a military survival tool? That was marketed to scouts? Wtf? It probably sucked too, but I wouldn’t know because it was just extra, useless junk to me.

I learned pretty quickly that when you need a screwdriver, you need a screwdriver. When you need a set of tweezers, you need a set of tweezers. The multitool version just isn’t as good. Some of the tools would work in a pinch, but were never as good as the real thing. Others simply wouldn’t work at all.

Yet, this is a lesson we somehow need to learn over and over as adults, especially in a business context. We’re constantly bombarded with one-solution-does-it-all-integrates-with-everything product marketing campaigns.

Unsurprisingly, they’re usually just as bad as my old Swiss Army Knife. The features never seem to work as well as a dedicated solution. There are all kinds of bundled features that you don’t need. Even worse, we find ourselves locked into these products because, “we got this for free when we bought the suite, we might as well use it.”