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The Brief
A weekly letter from the team building Brief. What operators tell us about decisions that never carried, and what we are building about it.
For the long-form arguments underneath all of this, read The Executive Intelligence Papers.
The estimate that came back at the last minute
A director at an electrical contracting firm handed off an estimate with a fair deadline, and it came back at the last minute. Zac on why a record kept by hand stops being kept, and what keeps it instead.
The deliverable she has to chase
About two in three executives carry 25 or more open commitments at once. A regional sales director on the one she is still chasing, and Larry on the number no company he ran could produce.
The payment that came too late
The financing was agreed and the money was paid, after the date the deal depended on. An operations chief on a commitment that was kept, and kept too late.
A meeting nine months cold
Three quarters of his meetings are set by somebody else, and some land with a customer he has not dealt with in nine months. A sales executive's calendar, and what a system should already know when he walks in.
The quotation nobody sent
The pricing was worked out and finished, and then it sat until the customer complained. A senior engineer's four lines, and what executives rank second from last when you make them choose what a system should do for them.
The promise he decided to trust
We asked executives at manufacturers, contractors, and freight companies what a slipped commitment actually cost them. The answer that wins is not the one software gets sold on, and a senior logistics director gave the shortest version of why.
The decision that got made twice
A senior program director at a medical device manufacturer watched a settled decision come back months later. The alignment was real, the process ran, the answer was real, and his organization paid for all of it twice.
The fix that was never switched on
A sales director at an industrial gases manufacturer was owed a process improvement. Operations designed it and handed it over. The customer is still getting product the old way.
The decision that cost a meeting every day
A VP of operations at a private-label food manufacturer made a call, handed it to his department, and found out later it had never taken. His fix was a meeting every day until it stuck.
The deal nobody was driving
A VP of operations at an industrial machinery manufacturer lost two weeks on a deal that changed hands until nobody was holding it. Nothing got dropped. The handoff did.
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