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Part I

Part I - The Alignment Fantasy

(Or: Everyone Agreed, So Naturally Everything Went Sideways)

The meeting was meant to fix reporting.

It fixed morale briefly.

Leadership opened with:

“Reporting feels harder than it should be.”

Everyone nodded.

Operations said users were struggling. IT said the workflow was clunky. Compliance said “risk”. Leadership said “visibility”.

Four meanings. One sentence.

Someone wrote “Improve Reporting Experience” on the whiteboard.

This phrase meant nothing, which made it perfect.

Someone else said:

“I think we’re aligned.”

No one disagreed, because disagreeing would have required knowing what they were agreeing to.

The meeting ended ten minutes early.

This was celebrated.

The Plan (Such As It Was)

A follow-up email arrived.

It contained:

  • appreciation
  • momentum
  • next steps
  • the phrase “quick win” twice

IT was asked to “propose something lightweight”.

No one defined lightweight. No one defined something.

Work began immediately.

The Button

Two weeks later, a button appeared.

It was:

  • clean
  • responsive
  • well-tested
  • confidently wrong

The button did exactly what IT thought the problem was.

This was unfortunate.

The Pain Party

Support tickets arrived first.

Users were confused, but politely so.

“Not sure if this is working as intended?”

Ops noticed next.

Users were skipping steps Ops assumed were sacred, immutable, and protected by common sense.

They were not.

Compliance noticed shortly after.

Reports were now:

  • easier to submit
  • harder to trace
  • technically valid
  • spiritually alarming

IT checked the spec.

Everything matched.

Leadership noticed last.

The dashboards looked better. Complaints were down. Costs were quietly climbing.

This was confusing.

The Post-Release Meeting (Full Attendance, No Answers)

Someone asked:

“Why did we build it like this?”

IT said:

“That’s what was requested.”

Ops said:

“That’s not what we meant.”

Compliance said:

“We assumed controls would still apply.”

Leadership said:

“I thought this was about visibility.”

Everyone stared at the button.

The button stared back, smugly.

Someone finally said the sentence that ends all good intentions:

“I guess we just had different assumptions.”

This was true. It was also spectacularly useless.

The Outcome

  • Work was done
  • Money was spent
  • Stress increased
  • The original problem survived, unharmed

The team agreed on one thing:

“Next time, we should probably be clearer.”

This thought was immediately deprioritised.

End of Part I.