It didn’t start right. Not Monday, not really. Burnt coffee that wasn’t even hot, muffins with the plastic still half stuck to them, a whiteboard with “AI Vision 2025” scribbled like graffiti from a meeting nobody remembered. Somebody joked about the smell. Somebody else just scrolled. The VWCG site came up with its silly emojis—robot, target, DNA helix—half the table laughed, the other half looked at their phones. Nobody closed it though. Funny. Or not funny. Both.
The AI Readiness Assessment—that was the first punch. Or second. Who knows. Scores red like warning lights on a dashboard. Governance? Dead. Data? Rotten. Compliance? “We’ll fix later.” Later is a liar. The CTO pressed fingers to his temple, like maybe he could delete the chart with pressure. We argued if the tool was shallow, argued if the questions were too blunt, argued because quiet made it worse. But the gaps didn’t move. Once you see the rot you can’t unsee it. The paper stayed taped to the wall even when someone half-heartedly tugged at the corner. Tape stronger than optimism.
Then maybe Tuesday, maybe not, the Vision Canvas showed up. Blank spaces, too many. We filled with slogans—innovation, excellence, customer-first. They looked li-ke props. The youngest voice, not even staff really, muttered, “we don’t do that.” The words landed harder than the slogans. Erase. Erase. Erase. The board got emptier but heavier. Driving home I replayed that line. Later that night, fridge light humming, leftovers sweating in plastic—I thought of the same thing: how much of our talk is just decoration. A post-it on the fridge fell, fluttered to the floor. I left it there. It didn’t matter. Or it did.
Midweek bled in. SOP chaos spilled across the floor. Refunds one way on Tuesday, another on Thursday. Onboarding six styles depending on mood. Safety checklists half-written, three versions fighting for truth. The SOP Taxonomy didn’t fix it, but it named the sprawl. Naming is cruel. The Creation Wizard spat out a draft SOP—ugly, boring, usable. People nodded. One file, one rule, one less fight. Not glory, but relief. I opened that file three more times since. Still plain. Still useful. I thought about printing it out but the printer jammed with a blinking red light nobody knew how to reset. Jammed machines, jammed processes. Symbols everywhere.
Then Thursday. Or maybe it was Wednesday wearing Thursday’s mask. The SOP Management Wizard cracked tempers. Ownership. Blame. Voices climbing walls. A chair squealed across the tile. Door slam. Silence. Twenty minutes later the slammer walked back in with coffee. No apology. No nod. Just sat. We scribbled dates, review cycles, owners. The boring bones of order. No applause. No Slack emojis. Just fewer fights next week. Quiet wins feel fake until you need them. I wrote the dates crooked. Someone corrected me. Someone else crossed it back. Three versions of the same timeline. Order out of disorder, or disorder out of order. Hard to tell.
Leadership radar—brutal. The Leadership DNA Radar spun up circles and none were flattering. Weak empathy. Weak listening. Delegation shaky. Faces tightened. Somebody laughed sharp and short, not real laughter. The Business Emotional Intelligence tool came after, like salt after a cut. Scores even lower. “Therapy time,” someone muttered. The laugh cracked. Nobody doubled down. Silence filled like water. Cruel honesty or honest cruelty. Both. Both stuck. The papers rustled when folded, tucked into bags. Some would read later. Some would hide them. Some would “forget.” Nobody really forgets.
Pizza night came with the SWOT Tool. Dry markers failed, napkins became canvases. Grease stains on “opportunities.” Threats listed crooked, strengths barely half a line. Weaknesses scribbled diagonal. It looked like a child’s scrawl. And maybe that’s why it mattered. Too sloppy to fake. Too greasy to hide in a slide deck. Then the 90-Day Roadmap landed. Ink, not pencil. Names stapled to goals. No wiggle. Heavy. Some shrugged, some signed. Weight doesn’t care if you agree. The roadmap lay on the table, absorbing grease from the pizza box. Smudge on Q2. Nobody wiped it. Maybe nobody should.
Did it fix anything? No. Did it break something? Also no. Did it reveal the cracks we were already tripping over? Yes. And maybe that’s fixing. Or maybe it’s nothing. Monday fog. Friday grease. Between them, bruised egos and half-finished files.
The details repeat whether I want them to or not. Burnt coffee smell again. Muffins again. The carpet smell wet again. The humming light, always humming. The blinking cursor when “innovation” typed then erased. A ringtone buzzing default notes for twenty long seconds. A sharpie marker drying out after two strokes. A cardboard pizza box edge torn into a crescent. Nobody commented, but I can’t forget. They don’t fit the story but they live in it. Memory doesn’t care for neatness. And I think of the squeaky chair again, squeak louder the second time. Or was it the same squeak repeated in my head? Doesn’t matter.
Ask me what changed and I’ll say nothing. Ask again, everything. We left with unreadiness reports, erased slogans, SOP scraps, radar wheels, greasy SWOT napkins, a roadmap no one wanted to own but everyone carried home. Not tidy. Not complete. But not erasable either. They live now, like bruises live. Fade maybe, but not gone.
Progress? Maybe. Pretend less? Definitely. Pretend more? Also yes. Contradiction sits in the chair next to me. Sometimes it’s the loudest voice. Sometimes it’s quiet, watching. A screen blinked error in the corner of the room all week. Nobody fixed it. Nobody asked. But everyone saw it. Same as the bruises. Same as the silence.
A sprint isn’t speed. It’s fragments. Arguments, laughter cut short, stale muffins, chairs squealing, pens dying, napkins with grease halos, charts that hurt to look at. Five days or maybe three, doesn’t matter. The fog didn’t vanish, it just moved sideways. Into corners. Into inboxes. Into us. Into me, even now. Writing this, the smell of coffee again, cold, bitter, real.
Coffee. Again. Cold this time. Muffins gone stale enough to crumble when touched. The hum still above us. I don’t know if we built or broke or both. Maybe both. Probably both. Enough? Maybe. Maybe not.
And maybe that’s the point. Or maybe there isn’t one. Or maybe the point fell like that fridge post-it and I never bothered to pick it up. Still on the floor. Still waiting. Still humming like the light.
Consultant 
Consultant 
Consultant