By Jon Hansen | Procurement Insights | January 2026
Every major failure wave starts with the same sentence:
“Things are moving so fast, we may be forced to adopt.”
It sounds pragmatic. It feels realistic. And it is almost always the moment agency quietly disappears.
I’ve heard this argument in every cycle since 1998 — ERP, e-procurement, SaaS, cloud, and now AI. Different labels. Same outcome.
The claim is never really about speed. It’s about permission.
Where the “Torrent” Narrative Actually Sits
In successful transformations, urgency accelerates learning. In failed ones, urgency accelerates commitment.
The “we have to move with the flow” framing appears at a very specific point: after early warning signs are visible, before readiness is assessed, and just as accountability starts to feel uncomfortable.
At that moment, inevitability becomes a substitute for judgment.
What Happens Next (Predictably)
Once organizations accept that they “have no choice”:
- Readiness gets rebranded as delay
- Vendor selection starts before success criteria are defined
- Pilots quietly turn into rollouts
- Exceptions multiply and get normalized
- Teams improve around misalignment instead of removing it
- Utilization stalls at a thin slice of capability
- Adoption gets blamed — not the decision sequence
The speed of consequence increases, but the root cause is unchanged.
The “Torrent” narrative marks where readiness evaluation ends and failure risk accelerates.
The Uncomfortable Truth
True torrents remove choice. Enterprise technology waves do not.
Even under regulatory, competitive, or board pressure: sequencing is still a choice. Scope is still a choice. Governance is still a choice. Readiness is still a choice.
What changes is tolerance for ambiguity — not the laws of transformation.
Why Leaders Get Caught
The “torrent” argument offers relief: it reduces personal exposure, diffuses responsibility, and justifies skipping the hardest conversations.
But it also guarantees the outcome will be owned later, when reversal is no longer possible.
By the time boards hear the problem, the choice has already been made.
The Pattern That Actually Works
Organizations that succeed don’t deny urgency. They separate two speeds:
Fast learning: assess readiness, clarify decision rights, define success, surface constraints
Deliberate commitment: deploy only once the organization can absorb change
Readiness doesn’t slow you down. It determines whether speed becomes advantage — or accelerant.
Nothing fundamental has changed in transformation. Only the speed at which failure reveals itself.
And the belief that “we have no choice” remains the most reliable early warning signal of all.
Jon Hansen is the creator of The Hansen Method® and founder of Hansen Models™, helping organizations prevent the 80% implementation failure rate through Phase 0™ readiness assessment.
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Procurement Insights
The “Torrent” Argument: Where Transformation Failure Quietly Begins
Posted on January 20, 2026
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By Jon Hansen | Procurement Insights | January 2026
Every major failure wave starts with the same sentence:
It sounds pragmatic. It feels realistic. And it is almost always the moment agency quietly disappears.
I’ve heard this argument in every cycle since 1998 — ERP, e-procurement, SaaS, cloud, and now AI. Different labels. Same outcome.
The claim is never really about speed. It’s about permission.
Where the “Torrent” Narrative Actually Sits
In successful transformations, urgency accelerates learning. In failed ones, urgency accelerates commitment.
The “we have to move with the flow” framing appears at a very specific point: after early warning signs are visible, before readiness is assessed, and just as accountability starts to feel uncomfortable.
At that moment, inevitability becomes a substitute for judgment.
What Happens Next (Predictably)
Once organizations accept that they “have no choice”:
The speed of consequence increases, but the root cause is unchanged.
The “Torrent” narrative marks where readiness evaluation ends and failure risk accelerates.
The Uncomfortable Truth
True torrents remove choice. Enterprise technology waves do not.
Even under regulatory, competitive, or board pressure: sequencing is still a choice. Scope is still a choice. Governance is still a choice. Readiness is still a choice.
What changes is tolerance for ambiguity — not the laws of transformation.
Why Leaders Get Caught
The “torrent” argument offers relief: it reduces personal exposure, diffuses responsibility, and justifies skipping the hardest conversations.
But it also guarantees the outcome will be owned later, when reversal is no longer possible.
By the time boards hear the problem, the choice has already been made.
The Pattern That Actually Works
Organizations that succeed don’t deny urgency. They separate two speeds:
Readiness doesn’t slow you down. It determines whether speed becomes advantage — or accelerant.
Nothing fundamental has changed in transformation. Only the speed at which failure reveals itself.
And the belief that “we have no choice” remains the most reliable early warning signal of all.
Jon Hansen is the creator of The Hansen Method® and founder of Hansen Models™, helping organizations prevent the 80% implementation failure rate through Phase 0™ readiness assessment.
-30-
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