Before You Fund the Fix: What 130 Projects Taught a $1.4B Company

An organization that needs to transform is a lot like ahouse with leaky pipes. It still works, but nobody wants to open the walls.

Most of the companies I’ve worked with over the last 35 years grew by muscling through their problems. They patched oneleak and then another, made a local fix here and a workaround there, and leanedon talented people to cover for a system that stopped making sense a long timeago. Good people are very good at this, and as a result, the problem oftenstays hidden.

That approach can work for years. When it finally gives,the leadership team is suddenly making decisions under pressure instead of bychoice.

For instance, a board member introduced us to the new CEOof a $1.4 billion private-equity-owned technology company. Before we opened anywalls, we asked the leadership team for a list of every project underway.

We received 15 emails with spreadsheets attached. Oneexecutive forwarded 10 separate threads. We combined everything into one listwith owners, team members, and financials where available. The total came tomore than 130 active projects.

The CEO said the list was wrong. As we went through itline by line with the management team, it became clear that the list was right,and probably understated. He looked at his team and said, “This is why webrought these guys in.”

The worst leak was two groups making changes to the CRMplatform at cross purposes. If both had finished, the sales team would not haveknown how to book or manage an opportunity. (Opportunity management and thesystems roadmap were both run by hand, and nobody could say what the 130projects added up to.)

The leaks had stayed hidden inside the walls while theywere still small. By the time it became visible, the company had to make senseof overlapping work, unclear ownership, and investments that could not beevaluated as a portfolio.

The better path is to outrun the chaos. That starts withtreating transformation as a set of deliberate bets, not a pile of improvementprojects. A bet might be new technology, a new market, redesigned operations,or a different business model. Each one is an investment the company expects topay back.

Those bets come in different sizes. Some pursuebreakthrough impact and carry significant risk. Others are smaller, safer, andbuild momentum over time. I think about them the way a manager builds abaseball lineup: you want to be able to produce some home runs, but most ofyour wins come from singles and doubles.

Similarly, most organizations know they need to change,and many even know roughly which direction to go. What they lack is a reliableway to decide which ideas deserve capital and which problems are only symptomsof something deeper.

I built the Decipher & Deliver process to closethat gap.

First, Decipher. Open the walls and find out what isactually leaking before funding a fix. Surface what the organization alreadyknows but has not said out loud, then test each idea hard enough that only thestrong ones survive.

Then, Deliver. Turn what you learned into a short list ofbets, assign people who have real time to do the work, report progresshonestly, and establish enough governance to adjust before a problem becomes acrisis.

At the technology company, 35 projects survived the cut.We grouped them into eight super projects by theme, which made the work easierto communicate across the company. Each one had an owner and clear objectives,without overlap. Outside consulting spend fell approximately 25% after weremoved duplicate work and phased the rest.

The company gained more than the savings. I call it the Operator’sEdge, the payoff to executing Decipher & Deliver in the right order.

Decision quality

You knowwhich ideas and bets deserve capital before the money moves instead of findingout during rollout.

Execution velocity

The timefrom decision to result gets shorter because every project has one owner withthe time and authority to do the work. At the technology company, everyone knewwho owned each project and what it was meant to deliver, so there were nosurprises.

Compounding learning

Eachcycle teaches the organization something about how to make the next decision.It gets better at choosing bets every time it goes through the process.

Decipher& Deliver: Removing Friction Points in Business and Digital Transformationscomes out October 6, 2026, and is available for preorder atdecipheranddeliver.com.

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