I’m Joe Schiavone. Final time, we talked about roadmaps, keep in mind? The very best ones are constructed to return aside on objective, with the goalposts already transferring when you’re nonetheless drawing the diagram.
A bunch of you reached out after that one (thanks, by the best way), and the query that stored touchdown in my inbox was some model of this:
“Modular roadmap, certain. However what really executes it?”
Truthful query, certainly. And the trustworthy reply? No matter you inherited.
Most CIOs don’t get handed a flawless “Don’t change a factor” roadmap. They get handed a field of elements — some labeled, some not, some with the directions lacking fully, and no less than one piece you’re fairly certain got here from a distinct field discovered at the back of a server room someplace.
Welcome to the function: some meeting required.
You’ve Acquired An Inheritance — No, Not The One From Aunt Millie
Right here’s the factor no person tells you whenever you take a CIO seat: The technique you “have” isn’t actually a technique. It’s a manifesto answering, how did we get right here?
- Layer one: selections made by the CIO earlier than you
- Layer two: selections made by that CIO’s marketing consultant
- Layer three: a board mandate from 2019 that no person questions anymore as a result of the individuals who agreed to it have all moved on
- Layer 4: a vendor relationship that exists as a result of somebody went to school with somebody
- Layer 5: a governance committee that meets each different Thursday, and no person is fully certain what it governs
You pop the lid and begin sorting elements. Some snap collectively. Some don’t match. Some appear like they belong however are glued to one thing they shouldn’t be glued to.
And naturally, you’ve acquired a board assembly in six hours the place it’s essential to clarify how the entire thing goes to ship an AI technique, a value discount, a safety posture improve, and a potential carve-out — all of it, by the best way, earlier than This autumn.
No stress. Sound acquainted?
It Even Got here With A Handbook …
Kind of. There’s all the time a slide deck (I like a great slide deck), and there’s all the time a slide that claims “5-12 months Roadmap” in good 32-point font with 5 coloured containers and arrows that largely go in the appropriate path. Somebody introduced it. It acquired applause. The exec management staff acquired teary-eyed. The roadmap acquired laminated. It now lives in a SharePoint folder no person opens.
The deck is the field artwork, not the guide. The actual magic is no matter occurs whenever you attempt to make the factor do one thing it wasn’t doing yesterday; that is the place the agility of your “technique” reveals itself — which brings me to a narrative.
Image This (Cue Flashback Music And Distant Gaze)
I had a divestiture pending: SEC approval in movement, deal mechanics below wraps, and a decent read-in checklist — a handful of leaders who knew what was coming and a a lot bigger group that didn’t. You understand how this goes. You’ll be able to’t prestage the best way you’d wish to. You’ll be able to’t interact the broader groups. You’re sketching the separation within the margins, leaning on whoever’s already learn in, and quietly hoping the plan holds collectively lengthy sufficient to do the true work when the enterprise formally offers the thumbs-up.
Approval lands. Clock begins. You’ve acquired 90 days to divest, button up the TSAs, and hand over a relatively giant airplane that’s nonetheless very a lot in flight.
We do what good groups do. Get up the workstreams. Map the dependencies. Sequence the cutovers. Construct the TSA scaffolding. Talk, talk, talk. Day 30: on monitor. Day 45: totally on monitor. Confidence is constructing. The so-called technique, the inherited one, the one no person had stress-tested at this scale, seemed prefer it was going to carry. After which …
Some Components Bought Individually
The acquirer comes again to the desk. Seems the core operational platform — the brains of the manufacturing system, the factor really working manufacturing — wasn’t of their plan. They didn’t have a path to face up their very own. They didn’t have a substitute technique. They didn’t have time. And so they needed to keep on ours.
Small downside … we weren’t decommissioning that platform. We have been nonetheless on this line of enterprise. The system we have been being requested to share was the identical system working our operations — identical code, identical information airplane, identical spine.
The TSA, to its credit score, didn’t overpromise. It didn’t should. As a result of to get the deal closed, we needed to step up.
So now the puzzle isn’t: How will we hand off a system? The puzzle is: How will we maintain them working, on our infrastructure, absolutely segregated from the whole lot we nonetheless must function, with out compromising both facet — and do it inside a divestiture clock that’s already ticking down?
That is the second the inherited M&A playbook confirmed its breaking level. Governance was constructed for sequential selections, not simultaneous ones. Vendor contracts assumed clear separation, not prolonged cohabitation. Safety structure was constructed for “us” and “them” — not “us, them, and a wall down the center of the identical home.”
So we pivoted. Tiger groups stood up in opposition to every stress level: segregation structure, information isolation, id boundary, assist mannequin, contractual reframe. Embedded management was put inside every tiger staff with determination authority on the spot, not a queue again to a steering committee that met each different Thursday. TSA scope was reopened and rewritten to cowl a relationship no person had drafted for. And we hoped for a little bit luck — as a result of truthfully, you don’t pull one thing this difficult inside 90 days with out some.
It labored. They stayed operational. We stayed operational. The wall held. The deal closed.
However right here’s the factor I would like each CIO studying this to take a seat with for a minute:
The rationale it labored was as a result of we took the unique technique, that framework, aside in actual time and reassembled it round the issue.
The decks didn’t save us. The governance committees didn’t save us. The structure diagrams didn’t save us. The power to disassemble and reassemble — that saved us.
That’s what a modular technique and versatile framework is definitely for: to not look proper on a slide however to return aside on objective, when actuality calls for it, with out breaking.
And when you’re sitting in a sell-side seat proper now considering that divestitures are the straightforward half of M&A — guess once more, they’re not. The vendor absorbs extra operating-model stress than most playbooks admit. You’re handing over a airplane in flight, maintaining your personal airplane within the air, and discovering midflight that a few of the elements you thought belonged to at least one airplane are literally load-bearing on each.
To Be Continued …
In order that’s the field: inherited, mislabeled, glued the place it ought to have been jointed, and someway nonetheless anticipated to ship an AI technique, a value discount, and a deal by This autumn.
Understanding your fastidiously designed technique wants to return aside is one factor. Understanding easy methods to design one which’s constructed to return aside on objective, below stress, with out breaking — that’s a distinct dialog fully.
Half 2 is the place we get into it much more: Batteries Required (Self-discipline Bought Individually). See you there.
