The Day Unexpected

The Day Unexpected

I woke up early this morning and spent the first hour or so laying there and reading from Django Wexler’s “The Thousand Names”.  I followed that leisurely start with a hot cup of coffee and a bowl of Special K. I tossed a few text back and forth with T.R. before finally starting the inevitable morning commute.  My monkey-mind, much beloved and terribly exasperating, started chattering and jumping around.  I used a few counter-measures to hold it at bay.  I took a different route to work.  I focused on going with the flow.  I stopped to gas up the SUV.  When I arrived at the office, I visualized being armored and I repeated a simple mantra - “Stay tight. Stay focused.”  I started the day weaving through all of the steps necessary for a project go-live.  I reviewed documents. I reviewed checklists. I updated the cut-over plan.  I moved smoothly into the first meeting of the day and…

The day unexpected appeared.

The project I have been working on, the project that was scheduled to go live later this week is suddenly on hold. Technically, we are ready to go.  The portion of the project I am responsible for is sitting in the box, ready to be deployed. The customer is not ready to go.  The customer feels they did not communicate well enough or deeply enough to their core constituency.  They need to plan their portion of the roll-out again.  All of the pressure that was inside of me, that was building to completion at the end of the week, is gone. Poof.  We’re on hold for future direction.  In my experience, most programs that get this close to completion and the stop…they are done.  They are not revivable.  This one might make it.  They seem convinced they are heading in the right direction and it is more a problem of execution than a problem of concept.  They may be right. I give them about a fifty-fifty shot at salvaging their work.