I want you to pause for a few moments and contemplate the gap between the Green Line and the Blue and Red Lines and tell me what you think they represent.
Now, take a few moments to read (or re-read) yesterday’s post The Matrix Of ProcureTech Evolution: Take “The Green Pill!”
SO, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Between the Green Line and the two Blue and Red Lines is the unecessarily high rate of ProcureTech initiative failures.
THE CAUSE
When methods “go mainstream,” they often get emptied of the conditions that made them work. That’s what happened to Lean and Agile—and it’s the same failure pattern your “stealth adoption → ~45% effectiveness loss” is flagging.
Why Lean & Agile degraded
- Tool-first commercialization
- Vendors and consultants sell templates, tools, and ceremonies because they scale—principles and hard org changes don’t.
- Result: “Lean = 5S posters & kanban boards,” “Agile = stand-ups + Jira,” with no real authority, skills, or incentives behind them.
- Cargo-cult / checklist compliance
- Teams copy visible rituals without the invisible prerequisites (empowered teams, andon authority, WIP limits, real product ownership).
- Theatre replaces problem-solving; metrics are gamed (story points, OEE, utilization).
- Local optimization beats systems thinking
- Lean misused as cost-cutting (slash inventory, headcount) ignoring system constraints and resilience.
- Agile reduced to feature factory velocity, starving discovery and flow. “Water-Scrum-Fall” emerges (big upfront plans, agile in the middle, big-bang release).
- Scaling without readiness
- SAFe-style rollouts and “enterprise Lean” add layers, but don’t change power, incentives, or skills.
- More roles/ceremonies, same bottlenecks. Governance expands while cycle time and quality stall.
- Leadership abdication
- Leaders outsource change to a framework; they don’t remove blockers (policies, funding, approvals, silo targets), so teams can’t act on what they learn.
- No continuous recalibration
- Transformations “install once.” As conditions drift, practices rot; retros lose teeth; metrics stop predicting outcomes.
What the degradation looked like (impact)
- ROI erosion: early wins flatten; net gains fall ~30–50% from initial case studies as gaming and compliance costs grow.
- Longer, noisier flow: WIP and handoffs creep back; cycle-time variance rises even if averages look OK.
- Quality plateau or regress: defect and rework rates stop improving; teams ship faster—but fix more later.
- Resilience loss (Lean): under-buffered supply chains snap under shocks (JIT misapplied without risk buffers).
- Morale & trust drop (Agile): velocity targets → burnout and sandbagging; product learning stalls; stakeholders see “agile theater.”
- Transformation fatigue: more ceremonies/tools, fewer outcomes; sponsors disengage.
How to avoid repeating this with Hansen’s methodology (HFS)
Use HFS’s fit-first + recalibration spine as anti-degradation guardrails:
Bottom line: Lean and Agile degraded when they were copied as rituals, sold as toolkits, and scaled without the enabling conditions. The impact was predictable: ROI decay, fragility, and theater. HFS can avoid this if you codify fit checks, outcome KPIs, and quarterly recalibration as non-negotiables—and link fees to measured improvement rather than activity.
TODAY’S TAKEAWAY
From Gartner to KPMG, and many more in between, what I developed over the past 25 years of my life in a career that has spanned more than 40 years is being quietly assimilated by non-original thinkers who, like making photocopies of a photocopy, of a photocopy, marginalize creative initiatives for the sake of scalability and profit.
In short, there is no justifiable reason for the high rate of ProcureTech failures – NOT ONE!
Now – and I love technology, is never going to change the high failure rate until procurement practitioners from all levels of an organization abandon the “play it safe, no one ever got fired for buying IBM” mindset. The real risk is not with the innovators, it is with those who monetize the effectiveness out of the innovations that can and will deliver the long sought after outcomes in our industry.
30
Which Pill Will You Take?
Procurement Insights
Revisiting Yesterday’s Blue Pill Post
Posted on September 4, 2025
0
I want you to pause for a few moments and contemplate the gap between the Green Line and the Blue and Red Lines and tell me what you think they represent.
Now, take a few moments to read (or re-read) yesterday’s post The Matrix Of ProcureTech Evolution: Take “The Green Pill!”
SO, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Between the Green Line and the two Blue and Red Lines is the unecessarily high rate of ProcureTech initiative failures.
THE CAUSE
When methods “go mainstream,” they often get emptied of the conditions that made them work. That’s what happened to Lean and Agile—and it’s the same failure pattern your “stealth adoption → ~45% effectiveness loss” is flagging.
Why Lean & Agile degraded
What the degradation looked like (impact)
How to avoid repeating this with Hansen’s methodology (HFS)
Use HFS’s fit-first + recalibration spine as anti-degradation guardrails:
Bottom line: Lean and Agile degraded when they were copied as rituals, sold as toolkits, and scaled without the enabling conditions. The impact was predictable: ROI decay, fragility, and theater. HFS can avoid this if you codify fit checks, outcome KPIs, and quarterly recalibration as non-negotiables—and link fees to measured improvement rather than activity.
TODAY’S TAKEAWAY
From Gartner to KPMG, and many more in between, what I developed over the past 25 years of my life in a career that has spanned more than 40 years is being quietly assimilated by non-original thinkers who, like making photocopies of a photocopy, of a photocopy, marginalize creative initiatives for the sake of scalability and profit.
In short, there is no justifiable reason for the high rate of ProcureTech failures – NOT ONE!
Now – and I love technology, is never going to change the high failure rate until procurement practitioners from all levels of an organization abandon the “play it safe, no one ever got fired for buying IBM” mindset. The real risk is not with the innovators, it is with those who monetize the effectiveness out of the innovations that can and will deliver the long sought after outcomes in our industry.
30
Which Pill Will You Take?
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