From: Chief Operating Officer
Your division just completed a major platform migration — new system is live. It came in on time but the first two weeks have been rough. Support tickets are up 40%, two teams are running parallel workflows because they don't trust the new system, and a senior client escalated about data discrepancies.
Leadership wants a 2-minute verbal update at tomorrow's executive meeting: what happened, what you learned, and what should change before the next migration.
Below are four responses to this brief. Same situation, same information, same strategic insight — but four different ways of processing and expressing it.
Pick the one closest to how your mind would naturally work through this.
Response A — The Structured Brief
"Migration completed on schedule. Three issues in the first 14 days: support ticket volume up 40%, two teams maintaining parallel workflows, one client escalation on data integrity. Root cause: insufficient change rehearsal with end users pre-launch. Recommendation: build a 2-week guided adoption period into future migrations with daily triage and a rollback protocol."
Response B — The Narrative
"Okay so — the migration itself actually went well technically. The problem started on day three when the procurement team realized their approval chain was routed differently and just… went back to the old system. And then Accounts did the same thing. The client escalation was because a batch job didn't carry over historical data the way we mapped it. The real issue is that we tested the system but we never tested the humans. Nobody rehearsed what their Monday morning would feel like."
Response C — The Systems View
"The migration is a symptom, not the story. We have a change architecture that validates technology and skips behavior. Every migration we've done has the same shape — technical success, adoption friction, escalation, workaround. The 40% ticket spike isn't a migration problem, it's a rehearsal problem. Until we stop treating go-live as the finish line and start treating it as the starting condition, we'll keep producing this exact outcome."
Response D — The Blunt Read
"System works. People weren't ready. Two teams bailed to the old way. One client noticed bad data. We tested the platform but not the change. Next time, run people through it for real before we flip the switch. Not a demo — actual work, in the new system, with support standing by. Would've caught all three issues."