by -

The 23-Minute Meeting: When Best Practices Become Cargo Cults

The Hidden Cost of Copying

The 23-Minute Meeting: Cargo Cults of Best Practice

The Smell of Real Work

The aluminum dust was still clinging to the collar of Jim’s uniform, thick and abrasive, smelling faintly of cutting fluid and ozone. He shifted uncomfortably in the ergonomic chair they bought because Google uses them. He wasn’t supposed to be sitting; he was supposed to be running Machine 43. But here he was, staring at a whiteboard covered in Post-it notes representing ‘user stories’ for a product that was physically stamped out of metal and bolted together, not coded in the cloud.

Machine 43 Reality

Torque, groan of metal, precision fit. Velocity is measured in units per hour, not points completed.

The 23-Minute Iteration

Velocity metrics, Post-it notes, daily standups. Zero standing, zero candor.

“Okay,” said Brenda, the newly appointed Scrum Master, who used to manage inventory, “So, for our 23rd iteration of improving the bolt insertion sequence, what are our velocity metrics looking like?” Jim just looked down. The bolt insertion sequence hasn’t changed in seven years. It doesn’t need ‘velocity metrics.’ It needs Jim’s hands, which know the precise torque and the tiny, almost imperceptible groan the metal makes when the fit is exactly right. The bolt insertion sequence needed 153 workers to be on the floor, not in this glass box, wasting 23 minutes every morning in a ‘Daily Standup’ that had zero standing and even less candor.

⚡

AHA Insight #1: The Fear of the Blank Page

This

… Read more
by -

The $499,997 Powerpoint Graveyard: Why Perfect Strategy Is Dead

The $499,997 Powerpoint Graveyard: Why Perfect Strategy Is Dead

The weight of pristine intention rarely survives the first operational conflict.

You know the smell. That specific, expensive smell of fresh lamination and ink binding together 237 slides of high-gloss corporate intention. It sits on the shelf, dense and silent, often accompanied by the subtle, oppressive heat generated by the server rack storing the backup PDF. It’s physical evidence of success, the artifact of profound alignment, and the proof that someone spent $499,997 to tell us what we already vaguely suspected.

We call it ‘Project Everest.’

The codename itself is a symptom: grand, monolithic, implying that the summit is the goal, and the descent-the actual execution, the daily slog-is merely logistics. Last Tuesday, I watched a mid-level manager, sweating slightly in the climate-controlled office, scrolling frantically through his SharePoint history looking for the slide defining ‘Disruptive Enablement’ or ‘Enabled Disruption.’

This is where we live. This is the schism. We spend fortunes creating beautiful silence. We fetishize the process of strategy creation-the three months of workshops, the offsite dinners, the endless brainstorming sessions using sticky notes in three different shades of yellow-because it feels like *work*. It feels strategic. It feels important.

The Functionally Useless Masterpiece

We pay exorbitant sums for consultants who specialize in producing an immaculate theatrical performance for the executive suite, resulting in a deck that is aesthetically brilliant and functionally useless.

It’s a perfect strategy. On paper. And that, precisely, is the problem. It was

… Read more