“Every abandoned tool in your tech stack tells a story about a decision no one made”
Most tech stacks aren’t pristine ecosystems. They’re haunted houses. Dig a little and you’ll find zombie applications no one uses, tools from vendors long forgotten, and shadow workflows left behind by employees who no longer work there. These aren’t just IT nuisances. They’re symptoms of deeper organisational issues: fear of change, reactive decision-making, and leadership blind spots.
Some ghosts are quiet. A forgotten plugin here, an idle SaaS account there. Others wreak havoc: duplicate workflows, confused users, mounting costs, and security risks. Ghosts thrive in opacity. And where transparency dies, inefficiency breeds.
Recognising the Ghosts
There are many kinds of ghosts:
- Zombie tools: licensed but unused software, often still auto-renewed and unchallenged.
- Shadow workflows: automations or scripts no one understands, maintained out of fear.
- Tool duplication: multiple platforms doing the same job with no clear winner.
Ghosts form in the vacuum left by incomplete decisions. They’re the result of adopting tools hastily, never decommissioning properly, or handing out licenses without strategy. Over time, what began as flexibility becomes fragility.
Leadership Through Avoidance
In the past, I worked for an organisation that refused to move to Office 365, despite a clear business case I presented. The proposal showed that Skype for Business alone (this was a pre-Teams world) would cut international call costs, making the move essentially cost-neutral. But the idea was shelved. “Too expensive. Too much change.”
Then the pandemic hit.
That same organisation was forced to migrate almost overnight. What could have been a thoughtful, phased transition turned into a rushed, chaotic implementation. The delay didn’t save money. It just deferred the cost and magnified the pain.
This is what happens when ghosts are left to linger. By the time you’re forced to act, it’s no longer a strategic move—it’s an emergency response.
The Real Cost of Dead Tools
It’s easy to think a few unused tools are harmless. But the cumulative effect is significant:
- Wasted spend on licenses and infrastructure
- Employee confusion over where to work and communicate
- Missed integration opportunities across siloed systems
- Heightened security and compliance risks
- Erosion of trust in internal systems
When no one knows what a tool does, no one takes responsibility. And when no one takes responsibility, the ghosts multiply.
Exorcising Your Stack
So what does leadership look like in a haunted tech environment?
- Run an inventory: Know what’s active, what’s idle, and what’s invisible
- Audit usage: Real usage, not just license counts
- Assign ownership: Every system should have a name beside it
- Eliminate overlaps: Don’t fear consolidation
- Budget for strategic deletion: Treat tool removal as a value-generating task, not a cost
Ghosts don’t vanish on their own. They need to be faced.
Ghosts Are Optional
Every stack tells a story. Yours can be one of conscious strategy or unconscious drift. The tools you let linger will shape your culture, your costs, and your capacity for clarity.
Ghosts are optional. You just have to choose to see them.