3. The Plan - a Fiction We Agree to Believe
We sat in the K-Tec Steering Committee.
Milestones on track.
Issues under control.
Risks—some Amber, but mitigated.
Comms plan signed off.
It was Green. Completely Green.
And it didn’t feel right.
We wanted to believe the plan.
We chose not to ask the harder questions.
I didn’t trust the project manager.
Not because of what he was saying.
Because of what he wasn’t.
Two weeks later, I paused the project.
He had built a perfect plan for a system he did not understand—and would never admit it.
After the SteerCo, I went to see Sven, who was leading a separate transformation.
He had heard the story of a carer who had broken every rule to save a life.
His project never looked as good on paper.
Digitised workflows.
Real-time tracking.
Reduced admin.
More client visits. More revenue captured.
But he wasn’t comfortable.
“What happens to the older staff?”
“Do they adapt—or leave?”
“What about the migrant workforce?”
“Do they understand the system—or work around it?”
“And what happens when we introduce full transparency?”
During the trials, one carer had sat in a McDonald’s all day. She tapped off four client visits.
She didn’t realise the system tracked her location.
She was dismissed.
Sven asked for a six-week pause.
Reset the assumptions.
Rework the model around how the work was actually done—not how it was supposed to be done.
Redesign the changes around the day in the life of a carer.
On paper, both projects were Green.
Only one of them was real.
The difference wasn’t planning.
It was the willingness to doubt it.
We knew the K-Tec plan wasn’t real.
But we approved it anyway.
Because once the plan exists, truth becomes secondary.
The real question is who is willing to stop it.
Most projects don’t get paused.
They just continue.