The Checkbox Project

Winning organizations can do extraordinary things, more than anyone could ever do alone. A winning organization fully unleashes people’s creativity and capabilities. These organizations generate more value in less time, at lower cost, and seemingly with less effort.

Contrast that to an organization at the opposite end of the performance spectrum, which somehow constrains or even extinguishes people’s creativity and problem-solving capabilities. They generate less value over more time at a higher cost. And every activity, no matter how small, requires incredible heroic effort from many people.

What is remarkable is that the two organizations at the opposite ends of the performance spectrum can be the same organization. They are identical in every way except for how they are wired. This paper presents a startling case study of how a seemingly small effort, one which should result in a huge amount of business value, is nearly impossible to complete. It requires an epic amount of communication, coordination, escalation, prioritization, synchronization, and deconfliction across almost every functional silo in the organization. And despite the heroic efforts across multiple quarters of effort, the results are still not of the best quality and do not deliver the value promised.