The record
What we found, and what it cost.
Six investigations, disguised. Names, countries, dates and exact figures are altered. The mechanism, the sequence and the order of magnitude are not. Open any one for the full brief.
01 / The cases
Six businesses other businesses depend on.
In every one of these, a capable leadership team was producing a result it had not chosen. In none of them was anybody hiding anything.
01 / Telecoms
Three strategies, one room
A listed telecommunications group. Three versions of the strategy running at once, and no argument anywhere on record. US$38m a month.
Why we were called
Quarterly targets missed three times despite heavy network investment. Functions blaming each other. A restructure under consideration that would have removed two executives.
What we looked at
Board packs and minutes against the org chart people actually use. One-to-one sessions across the executive team and the layer below it.
What we found
Three members of the executive team were working to three different versions of the strategy. Explicit disagreement between them appeared nowhere in the record.
What it was costing
Duplicated investment and resource conflict modelled at US$38m a month. That number moved the conversation from alignment as a value to alignment as a line in the accounts.
What changed the argument: 14 decisions across 22 months, traced and dated. Each one made complete sense if you believed the version of the strategy that person believed.
02 / Telecoms
An escalation route with no deadline
A regional operator losing senior people across two cycles, with a separate explanation for each one. R310m.
Why we were called
Senior departures were being read one at a time, each with its own story. Exit interviews cited fit and pace rather than anything specific.
What we looked at
The exit record treated as evidence rather than as reporting. Escalation routes traced upward from the operating level, and how long each step took to respond.
What we found
A formal escalation route existed, with no deadline for a response. So issues moved informally instead, carried by people whose own bonus depended on the function they were escalating past.
What it was costing
Replacement, lost delivery and deferred network decisions modelled at R310m across 18 months. Most of it sat in the delay rather than in the recruitment.
What changed the argument: the same three names appeared in nine separate accounts of why a decision had stalled, and none of them was in the minutes.
03 / Energy
Four years of clean audits
A utility whose internal audits were perfect. The Chief Risk Officer thought the silence was too clean to be true. US$90m.
Why we were called
Four years of internal audits passed with perfect marks. The Chief Risk Officer could not point to anything wrong and did not believe the record.
What we looked at
Five years of audit findings against what people described in session. Where a concern had been raised, and what happened to the person who raised it.
What we found
A concern raised publicly five years earlier had been answered publicly and badly. The lesson the business drew was that raising a concern costs you something.
What it was costing
Seventeen issues downgraded before they reached the executive layer, three of them still live, carrying combined exposure modelled at US$90m.
What changed the argument: the audits were accurate. They recorded what had been reported, and what had been reported was shaped by one incident five years earlier.
04 / Mining
The structure changed. The authority did not.
A group that restructured the same reporting line three times, each one announced as the fix for the last. R1.2bn.
Why we were called
Three restructures of one reporting line in four years. Structure had been the answer often enough that somebody on the board began to doubt it.
What we looked at
A dated timeline of all three restructures, followed back four levels past the symptom, separating the immediate triggers from the conditions that came before all of them.
What we found
Decision rights were redrawn every time. What people were actually allowed to approve stayed exactly where it was. Each new structure inherited the old bottleneck intact.
What it was costing
Deferred capital decisions and a stalled production ramp modelled at R1.2bn across two years. The restructures themselves were the smaller number.
What changed the argument: one approval limit had not moved since before the first restructure, and every stalled decision had passed through it.
05 / Logistics
The curated brief
A European-headquartered operator losing senior people before a refinancing, with nothing specific in any exit interview. €14m a year.
Why we were called
Senior departures accelerating ahead of a refinancing. Exit interviews citing cultural friction, with the specifics missing from every one of them.
What we looked at
The Chief Executive's calendar against the pattern of what reached them. Sessions with the layer below, and the way problems were phrased when they arrived.
What we found
Problems raised at the top were met with an answer rather than a question. Disagreement was met with questioning that ran until the other person gave up.
The layer below learned to bring only the version that ended the conversation fastest.
What it was costing
Talent loss and decisions taken on curated data modelled at €14m a year. Direct replacement cost was a small fraction of it.
What changed the argument: the behaviour was not hidden and had been described internally as decisiveness. The cost was not the behaviour. It was what the business stopped telling itself as a result.
06 / Banking
Signed off three times, funded once
A group that approved the same programme three years running and funded a fraction of it each time. US$12m to US$18m a month.
Why we were called
A new core banking system, approved three years running and late every year. The executive committee had settled on the view that it was a supplier problem.
What we looked at
What the committee approved, set against what the budget actually released, year by year. Sessions with the committee and with the finance team that set the budget.
What we found
The committee approved the programme in full. The budget was set months later by a different team, on a different timetable, treating it as one request among many. Neither side knew the other was working from a different number.
What it was costing
Delay and rework on the new system modelled at US$12m to US$18m a month, before counting what the missing capability was worth.
What changed the argument: neither team owned the contradiction. Both were doing their job correctly. The money went into the gap between them.
02 / How these are published
What is altered, and what is not.
Clients agree to this work on the understanding that what we find stays between us. So the cases are disguised, deliberately and consistently, and here is exactly how.
Altered on purpose
Exactly as found
Where a client clears a figure in writing, we publish it with their name attached. Until then, this is the honest version: the shape is real, the identifiers are not.
03 / Next
In all six, the leadership team was capable and the information it was working from was not.
If one of these reads like your business, the first call costs nothing and ends with something written down.