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Why Courage Is the True Bottleneck in Modern Business
Tips for developing the one resource that might matter more than talent, knowledge, or funding
Imagine this: You’re a software developer at a massive enterprise. The kind with more departments than you can count. The kind that has meetings about meetings about meetings.
Your latest assignment sounds straightforward enough. Build a custom software solution to solve a data transfer problem between departments. Real important stuff…mission-critical, they say.
So you accept the challenge. Six gruelling weeks of gathering requirements. Four different departments. A dozen stakeholders, each with their own agenda, politics, and “essential” needs. Whiteboard sessions that leave your fingers stained with marker ink. Documents upon documents. Flow charts that stretch across multiple screens.
Finally, you’re pretty sure you understand the problem. The entire, convoluted, unnecessarily complex problem.
Presentation day arrives. The room fills with directors, managers, and team leads — each with their own special approval stamp and veto power. You’ve got the VP who needs to justify her budget, the director who’s allergic to anything not initiated by his team, and at least three managers whose entire careers depend on looking thoughtful while contributing nothing.
On your first slide, you map out the current process in excruciating detail. Data originating in Department A, transforming through Department B, validating in Department C, before finally reaching its destination in Department D. With each step, heads nod around the conference table. Yes, that’s exactly what we do. Yes, those are our pain points. Yes, this is why we need your solution. Yes, these mini muffins ARE really the best.
Then you click to slide two (the only other slide).
Slide two says the solution isn’t software. It isn’t months of development time. It isn’t even one single line of elegant code.
The solution is: Department A renames one column in their spreadsheet, adds a simple formula to another column, and emails it directly to Department D.
