Richard’s screen share flickered, a universe of charts no one had asked for. The line graph for ‘Synergistic Engagement Velocity’ was an aggressive shade of teal and trending, alarmingly, sideways. Twelve faces, pixelated into expressions of polite concentration, stared back at him. This was the fourth meeting this month about the Phoenix Dashboard, a piece of software that cost the company a little over $2.2 million. The purpose of this meeting, Richard announced, was to schedule a workshop to define the key performance indicators we would need to understand the data presented in the dashboard.
I took a sip of lukewarm coffee and looked out the window. It’s a strange feeling to be in a multi-million dollar speedboat that’s going in circles. We weren’t moving faster. We weren’t smarter. We had just built a very expensive, very digital room to have the same old meetings in. We were paying for the illusion of progress, a subscription to the feeling of momentum. It’s the corporate equivalent of repeatedly opening the fridge, hoping something new and exciting has materialized since you last looked 22 minutes ago. Nothing has, but the act of looking feels like a step towards a solution.
“It’s the corporate equivalent of repeatedly opening the fridge, hoping something new and exciting has materialized since you last looked 22 minutes ago. Nothing has, but the act of looking feels like