By Jon Hansen | Procurement Insights | January 2026
The Mayday Principle
If you’ve watched Mayday — the air crash investigation series — you know the central insight: a crash is never one thing.
It’s a convergence. Fatigue from a schedule change three weeks ago. A maintenance shortcut six months ago. A sensor error two years ago. Weather on that day.
Each factor survivable alone. Fatal in combination.
Investigators don’t blame the weather. They trace the strands back. They identify which factors converged to produce the outcome.
That’s how you understand a crash.
The Failure We Don’t Investigate
Now consider transformation failures.
An ERP implementation stalls. A digital transformation fails. An AI initiative gets canceled. An 80% failure rate persists across three decades.
How do we explain it?
“The vendor overpromised.” “Change management failed.” “The timeline was aggressive.”
That’s not root cause analysis. That’s blaming the weather.
No one traces the strands back. No one asks which factors converged, or whether the same pattern is active elsewhere right now.
We investigate air crashes with forensic precision. We dismiss transformation failures with narrative convenience.
What If Failure Isn’t a Future Event?
Boards ask: “Will this initiative succeed?”
That’s a prediction question. It has no reliable answer.
The better question: “Is failure already in motion?”
Because here’s what 30 years of documented implementations reveal: the factors that cause transformation failures don’t appear at go-live. They’re present at approval. They converge slowly. By the time the failure becomes visible, the strands have been active for months — sometimes years.
A dog whistle makes a sound. The frequency is real. Just because you can’t hear it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
The failure pattern is playing right now. The question is whether you have the instruments to detect it.
The Evidence: Two Practitioners, One Pattern
2008. A practitioner called me after his consulting engagement ended. His team was in a holding pattern. The consultants had delivered recommendations and left. No knowledge transfer. No capability building.
He asked: “Is anyone coming back?”
No one was.
2026. A practitioner I’m working with now faces the same situation. Different company. Different technology. Different consultants.
Same pattern. Same convergence. Same outcome unfolding.
Eighteen years apart — but standing in the same place: where practitioner abandonment happens after consultants exit without building organizational capability.
This isn’t coincidence. It’s a pattern that never stopped.
The 30-Year Data
Different technologies. Different vendors. Different decades. Same failure rate.
The pattern persists because the underlying conditions persist:
- Governance gaps from decisions made years earlier
- Readiness deficits from skipped assessments
- Consulting exits without knowledge transfer
- No forensic investigation when failures occur
What Boards Can Do
Air crash investigators prevent crashes by understanding which factors converge to produce them — and interrupting the convergence before it’s too late.
Boards can do the same.
Three Questions to Ask Before Approving Technology Investments:
1. “What is our current readiness score — and who measured it?”
Not vendor assessments. Not consulting confidence levels. A quantified, independent readiness assessment that measures whether your organization can absorb what you’re about to deploy.
2. “Which failure patterns from previous initiatives are still active?”
If your last three implementations failed for similar reasons, those reasons didn’t disappear. They’re still present. They’ll converge again unless explicitly addressed.
3. “What happens when the consultants leave?”
If the answer is “the internal team takes over,” ask: What capability building is happening now? What knowledge transfer is scheduled? Who owns continuity after the engagement ends?
The Bottom Line
The 80% failure rate isn’t bad luck. It’s a pattern — active, persistent, and detectable.
Gartner predicts what might happen. Phase 0 readiness assessment reveals what’s already happening.
The crash isn’t in the future. It’s in motion now.
The only question is whether your board has the instruments to hear it before you reach the point where it becomes undeniable.
For the deeper model behind this brief — including the theoretical framework for pattern-based risk observation — see the full analysis: “The Dog Whistle Problem: Academic Version”
Jon Hansen has been documenting procurement transformation patterns since 2007, building on research funded by Canada’s SR&ED program in 1998. His methodology — the Hansen Fit Score — provides the quantified readiness assessment that lets boards detect failure patterns before approval, not after launch.
Procurement Insights
The Dog Whistle Problem: Why Boards Can’t Hear the Crash Coming
Posted on January 9, 2026
0
By Jon Hansen | Procurement Insights | January 2026
The Mayday Principle
If you’ve watched Mayday — the air crash investigation series — you know the central insight: a crash is never one thing.
It’s a convergence. Fatigue from a schedule change three weeks ago. A maintenance shortcut six months ago. A sensor error two years ago. Weather on that day.
Each factor survivable alone. Fatal in combination.
Investigators don’t blame the weather. They trace the strands back. They identify which factors converged to produce the outcome.
That’s how you understand a crash.
The Failure We Don’t Investigate
Now consider transformation failures.
An ERP implementation stalls. A digital transformation fails. An AI initiative gets canceled. An 80% failure rate persists across three decades.
How do we explain it?
“The vendor overpromised.” “Change management failed.” “The timeline was aggressive.”
That’s not root cause analysis. That’s blaming the weather.
No one traces the strands back. No one asks which factors converged, or whether the same pattern is active elsewhere right now.
We investigate air crashes with forensic precision. We dismiss transformation failures with narrative convenience.
What If Failure Isn’t a Future Event?
Boards ask: “Will this initiative succeed?”
That’s a prediction question. It has no reliable answer.
The better question: “Is failure already in motion?”
Because here’s what 30 years of documented implementations reveal: the factors that cause transformation failures don’t appear at go-live. They’re present at approval. They converge slowly. By the time the failure becomes visible, the strands have been active for months — sometimes years.
A dog whistle makes a sound. The frequency is real. Just because you can’t hear it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
The failure pattern is playing right now. The question is whether you have the instruments to detect it.
The Evidence: Two Practitioners, One Pattern
2008. A practitioner called me after his consulting engagement ended. His team was in a holding pattern. The consultants had delivered recommendations and left. No knowledge transfer. No capability building.
He asked: “Is anyone coming back?”
No one was.
2026. A practitioner I’m working with now faces the same situation. Different company. Different technology. Different consultants.
Same pattern. Same convergence. Same outcome unfolding.
Eighteen years apart — but standing in the same place: where practitioner abandonment happens after consultants exit without building organizational capability.
This isn’t coincidence. It’s a pattern that never stopped.
The 30-Year Data
Different technologies. Different vendors. Different decades. Same failure rate.
The pattern persists because the underlying conditions persist:
What Boards Can Do
Air crash investigators prevent crashes by understanding which factors converge to produce them — and interrupting the convergence before it’s too late.
Boards can do the same.
Three Questions to Ask Before Approving Technology Investments:
1. “What is our current readiness score — and who measured it?”
Not vendor assessments. Not consulting confidence levels. A quantified, independent readiness assessment that measures whether your organization can absorb what you’re about to deploy.
2. “Which failure patterns from previous initiatives are still active?”
If your last three implementations failed for similar reasons, those reasons didn’t disappear. They’re still present. They’ll converge again unless explicitly addressed.
3. “What happens when the consultants leave?”
If the answer is “the internal team takes over,” ask: What capability building is happening now? What knowledge transfer is scheduled? Who owns continuity after the engagement ends?
The Bottom Line
The 80% failure rate isn’t bad luck. It’s a pattern — active, persistent, and detectable.
Gartner predicts what might happen. Phase 0 readiness assessment reveals what’s already happening.
The crash isn’t in the future. It’s in motion now.
The only question is whether your board has the instruments to hear it before you reach the point where it becomes undeniable.
For the deeper model behind this brief — including the theoretical framework for pattern-based risk observation — see the full analysis: “The Dog Whistle Problem: Academic Version”
Jon Hansen has been documenting procurement transformation patterns since 2007, building on research funded by Canada’s SR&ED program in 1998. His methodology — the Hansen Fit Score — provides the quantified readiness assessment that lets boards detect failure patterns before approval, not after launch.
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