Author's note: Integrated Operations

Why this volume exists

The received wisdom is that work fails at the handoff, that things get dropped between teams. Every business I examined with a seam problem had the opposite pattern: nothing was being dropped. The work was being done twice, by two teams who had never agreed what they were each finishing.

The case it opens with

An education company spent years trying to work out whether marketing or sales was failing. It replaced managers on both sides. Its close rate sat at two to three percent. Nothing was ever dropped between the two teams. Both were running qualification, neither had agreed what qualified meant, and the second pass landed on somebody who had already stopped listening.

Where the evidence went against me

I set out to cite the widely quoted figure that eighty percent of failures happen at handoffs. It has no origin. I traced it through secondary sources until the trail ended in citations of citations, and the number that does have evidence behind it says something different and less convenient. Writing that chapter meant giving up a line I had used in rooms for years.

What was cut

The note on method at the end records the statistics that were removed for exactly this reason. What replaced them is narrower and better supported: four definitions that have to be shared for a handoff to hold, and which of the four is wrong most often.

Where to read it

Principles of Practice, Volume II: Integrated Operations. Nothing Fell, and the Seams That Break Anyway Published by the National Board of Operations Professionals. The publisher page for this volume carries the full description and how it maps to the standard.