Engagement Labyrinth Strategic Rite

The Partner reads Brief at the gate,
Objective and Scope, don’t be late.
Hypothesis thesis,
The ritual releases,
And the mission’s now filed in the state.

“Define the value you seek,
Limit the scope to the meek,
Hypothesize the path,”
The incantation’s bath,
And the ticket gets filed for a week.

“If it is not MECE, it’s not sacred,”
The Principal’s mandate, make-stated.
Mutually exclusive,
Collectively inclusive,
Or the Issue Tree stays perforated.

The Associate carves the Tree down,
The Principal prunes with a frown.
Overlapping branches
Get stapled with chances,
And clarity starts to turn brown.

The Data Scribe pins up the Heat,
Impact and ease, complete.
The nodes get their color,
But nothing gets duller,
And the hypothesis list meets its beat.

The diagnostic’s complete, it is filed,
The 90-day sprint reconciled.
Stamped, sealed, confirmed
That the value’s discerned,
And the engagement’s diagnostically styled.

The dossier lists and relists,
Every deliverable exists.
MECE is preserved,
What the client deserved,
Well, that’s secondary to brists.

The Partner ranks issues by weight,
The pyramid points to the gate.
But the structure’s so slick,
That nobody’ll pick
That we’re still not sure what’s innate.

The Steering Committee convenes,
Reviews the priorities, the means.
The briefing book’s thick,
The rhythm is quick,
And the value still lives in between.

“What value did we capture here?”
The metric that brings on the fear.
But the captures are filed,
The rigor compiled,
And the transformation’s nowhere near.

The engagement’s complete, it’s archived,
In the Cabinet, filed and survived.
The labyrinth holds it,
The ritual told it,
But the client’s not sure what arrived.

The Partner proclaims stakeholder aligned,
The Client still hasn’t designed
What value means here,
Or what to hold dear,
But both signed off on the signed.

The deliverables stacked in a pile,
Each one bound with a file.
But what was delivered?
The value? Delivered?
Or just the appearance of style?