Inside Innovation Theater
The levers a program manager can pull to get alignment
Between the announcement piece and the visibility piece, there’s a stretch of work I didn’t put on Substack. The work I did after walking in too late to prevent any of it.
This is that work. What I actually did. What it cost.
I wasn’t the fixer. I walked into a room six months too late to fix anything. I sat in a meeting where smart, well-paid people couldn’t answer basic questions about what they were building, and I watched it happen.
What I actually did was less heroic and more about revealing the broken structure that let this drag on for six months: the work that wasn’t happening, the scope that didn’t belong, and the absence of any timeline anyone could plan against.
That’s the lever. The rest is execution.
