This post covers Zone 3: The Resistance — a practical toolkit for surfacing and prioritizing smoldering platforms before they explode.
In the previous post, I described the three sources of transformation failure I've observed most consistently over my career. The first — and in many ways the most preventable — is the Smoldering Platform: a fragile, neglected system or process that everyone knows is at risk, and that no one addresses until it's too late.
This post is about changing that pattern. Not with a complex framework or a multi-year planning exercise. With two simple questions, three concrete steps, and the discipline to act on what you learn.
Start With a Reframe
The traditional transformation trigger goes something like this: a crisis occurs, an executive responds with urgency, and the organization scrambles to implement a solution as fast as possible. "We need to be completely in the cloud within two years." "We need to modernize this system by end of year." The burning platform drives the agenda.
What if we flipped that? What if, instead of waiting for the platform to catch fire, we proactively located the smoldering platforms and addressed them before they became emergencies? The transformation trigger shifts from reactive to deliberate. And the results — in my experience — are dramatically different.
"It's almost always about the flow of value to the customer. Start by measuring something important — and then carefully select the tools to make it better."
Step 1: Ask Two Questions Across the Organization
Surface the risks that aren't being talked about
Ask a wide swath of your leaders — in both technology and business — two deliberately open-ended questions. First: "What is the biggest, scariest problem we are not addressing?" Second: "What is the cost to the organization if this problem occurs?" These questions are open-ended by design. You want to hear about outdated systems, unhappy customers, product delivery failures, skill gaps, regulatory exposure — all of it. Cast the net wide. The diversity of answers is the point.
The two questions to ask
- What is the biggest, scariest problem we are not currently addressing?
- What is the cost to the organization if this problem occurs?
Step 2: Map Your Current Efforts Against the Problems
Find the gaps between what you're doing and what actually matters
List every initiative your organization is currently funding and executing. For each one, ask: which identified smoldering platform does this directly address? You will find one of two things. Either the initiative clearly maps to a real, identified problem — or it doesn't. If it doesn't align to a significant risk, do a gut check: have you missed an important issue? If not, seriously consider whether that initiative should continue at all. This is an uncomfortable exercise. It is also an extremely valuable one.
Step 3: Curate, Rank, and Own the List
Build a rank-ordered list of risks — sorted by cost of failure, not cost of solution
Combine duplicates. Clarify problem descriptions. Ensure each item has a clear articulation of the risk and what it would cost the organization if it materialized. Then rank-order the list from highest to lowest cost of failure. This is a critical distinction: you are not ranking by cost to fix. You are ranking by cost of inaction. The result is a curated, prioritized list of risks that could explode at any time — and a much clearer basis for making transformation investment decisions.
You are now the owner of something most organizations never have: a clear, honest, rank-ordered view of where the real risks live. This list becomes the foundation for every transformation prioritization conversation going forward.
A mid-size federal agency had a major public-facing system that everyone in leadership knew was old, frail, and expensive to maintain. The disaster recovery plan was, at best, a long shot. But budget cycle after budget cycle, it was deferred in favor of other priorities. When the system finally crashed — taking critical services offline for nearly a week — the CIO was replaced, the system was scheduled for emergency modernization at dramatically higher cost, and the reputational damage to the agency took years to repair. The smoldering platform had been visible for over a decade. It was simply never prioritized until it was unavoidable.
The Leadership Question That Changes Everything
Here's a practical shift that I've seen make an immediate difference in leadership culture. When someone comes to you with a proposal for a new initiative — a technology investment, a transformation program, a new tool or platform — resist the instinct to ask "How much will this cost?" first.
Instead, ask: "What really big problem does this solution solve?"
That single question reframes the entire conversation. It forces proposers to connect their solution to an identified organizational risk. It creates a natural filter against pet projects and silver bullet chases. And over time, it builds a culture where transformation investments are justified by problems, not by enthusiasm for solutions.
As this series continues, we'll keep building the list of questions worth embedding in your leadership culture. The next post tackles the most important set: the six questions every leader should be able to answer before launching any major transformation initiative.
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