Observed patterns
Patterns I've watched play out across organizations, without claiming I personally fixed them. They're here because the diagnosis is useful even when the story doesn't end with a result I can defend.
5 of 5 notes
Field Note
In the 48 hours before a board meeting, someone starts "pulling the numbers." Not reading them. Pulling them. The authoritative number often originates in an unofficial spreadsheet and arrives dressed as official reporting.
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The person everyone asks when the official system can't answer. Most companies have one per function — a sales Susan, an onboarding Susan, a billing Susan — and none of them appear on the systems diagram.
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Industry veterans arrive with the industry's assumptions pre-installed. Sometimes those assumptions are expertise. Sometimes they're the reason nobody has questioned a line item in a decade.
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Some meetings exist because the organization's visibility infrastructure doesn't. Delete the meeting without replacing its function and the coordination cost reappears as Slack threads, side conversations, and manual follow-up.
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Three people give three different revenue numbers in the same meeting, everyone nods, and a decision gets made anyway. Each number is technically correct according to its own source, definition, and timing.
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