Across five technology waves, I've worked inside the same structural break — introducing capability that exposed it, inheriting it when it failed, and rebuilding after it.
I know that pattern because I’ve been on both sides of it.
Capability moves faster than structure. Businesses keep forcing new demands through systems built for an earlier version of themselves. The cost shows up later — in margin erosion, delivery slippage, modernization that lands but doesn’t convert, and growth that creates friction instead of output. By the time those signals are visible, the break is already moving through the business — and usually far more expensive to deal with than expected.
Early in my career I helped introduce new capability into live organizations and watched the surrounding structure fail to absorb it. Later I was the one brought in when the architecture had already buckled — when the business was live, the commitments were active, and the system underneath it was no longer holding.
The visible failure changes. The break underneath it usually does not.
The response is usually the same. More technology. A new platform. A transformation program. The assumption is that new capability will correct the structural weakness underneath it. It rarely does.
The visible problem is rarely the first problem. By the time it shows up in one place, strain has usually been building across the system — in how decisions get made, how work moves, and how the business absorbs new demand. People fix what they can see. The thing they fixed keeps breaking.
How I see these situations →