Good Progress

Inside the Alignment-Industrial Complex

Every week, this insurer handles 250 calls about mileage corrections. Letting customers make the correction online would save them a phone call and reduce the work advisers must do manually. Customers want it. Shareholders have been promised digital transformation. Management calls it a priority. Two years later, the calls are still coming. At the fictional insurer in this book, every department can meet its targets while the company fails to deliver. Agreement changes none of the permissions required to finish. Keeping the departments aligned becomes a business of its own, with budgets and careers to protect. While the company negotiates permission, a competitor can improve its service and learn from the result. Giving someone the authority to finish means taking power from people the company is already rewarding. Those people help decide what changes. The agreed improvement is better alignment. The customer is still waiting. The bonuses have been paid in full.