Stories
The stories nobody tells in meetings.
13 stories found
The Number Nobody Looks At
Daniel had been COO for eleven months. The number was hiding in a spreadsheet that three people had access to and nobody opened.
The Meeting After the Meeting
Every company has two types of meetings. The one on the calendar and the one that happens in the hallway afterwards. The second one is where the real decisions get made.
What the Dashboard Hides
I built dashboards for years. Beautiful ones. Color-coded, real-time, executive-friendly. Then I realized the thing I was building was making the problem worse.
The Vendor Who Knew Too Much
When a single vendor holds the keys to your operation and nobody has the password, you don't have a partnership. You have a hostage situation.
Margin of Error
The villain in this story isn't a person. It's a process that nobody owns, everyone uses, and no one has questioned in four years.
The Cost of Convenience
They chose the easy path at every fork. Eighteen months later, the easy path was the most expensive thing in the building.
When the System Breaks
I was the one who told leadership the system was stable. Two weeks later, it collapsed on a Tuesday morning and I had to explain why every assurance I'd given was wrong.
The Invisible Handoff
Two teams. One player journey. A gap in the middle where things disappeared quietly enough that nobody noticed for three quarters.
Why Nobody Reads the Report
The weekly ops report was 34 pages long. It took two people a full day to compile. The average time anyone spent reading it was under ninety seconds.
The Onboarding Trap
The operator had optimized every step of the player onboarding flow. KYC, deposit, first bet -- all streamlined. What they hadn't optimized was what happened when a player didn't fit the happy path.
Three Meetings and a Spreadsheet
It started as a quick alignment chat. By the end of the week, three separate meetings had been scheduled to discuss what should go in a spreadsheet that nobody would end up using.
The Process Nobody Owns
The process had been running for six years. It survived three reorgs, two system migrations, and four different team leads. Nobody currently in the building had created it. Everyone assumed someone else was responsible.