The Split

Chapter 1: When “the Business” Isn't the Business

When engineers are excluded from “the business,” operational reality becomes advisory rather than binding. Strategy detaches from execution, ownership dissolves, and the organisation loses the ability to learn from its own outcomes.

The CEO of a mid-sized European insurer is eighteen months into her tenure. She has done what a competent CEO should do.

She hired a respected CTO from a digital-native company. She funded a three-year technology modernisation programme at € 40 million, more than the board wanted, less than the CTO asked for, a reasonable compromise. She approved a new organisational structure: product-aligned teams, a platform group, an architecture function, quarterly reviews tied to business outcomes. She attended the first two quarterly reviews personally, to signal commitment.

The strategy appears coherent, the CTO is capable, the funding is secured, and the board remains supportive.

Two years in, the results are mixed. Some metrics have improved: deployment frequency is up, a customer-facing app has launched, the recruitment brand is stronger. The core measures she cares about, however, have not moved: time to market for new products, operational cost per policy, customer retention. Two major initiatives have been quietly descoped. The CTO reports progress. The CFO reports cost. Neither report contradicts the other. Neither explains why the organisation feels no different.

She asks her direct reports. Each gives a plausible account. The CTO says the legacy systems are harder to untangle than expected. The CFO says the technology spend is growing faster than the revenue it was meant to unlock. The COO says the teams are still learning to work in the new model. The HR director says engineering retention is a market-wide problem.

None of them is lying. None of them is wrong. None of them is describing the same organisation.

She commissions an external review. The consultants produce 120 slides. The diagnosis is familiar: alignment gaps, unclear ownership, siloed delivery. The recommendation is another reorganisation, a new operating model, a governance framework. She has seen this pattern before, at her previous company. She approved the same kind of review there. It produced the same kind of recommendations. She left before the results were visible.

She suspects the problem is not alignment, or talent, or even legacy technology. She suspects it is something in the structure itself, something that makes every reasonable decision produce unreasonable outcomes. She cannot name it, because nothing in her reporting, her reviews, or her advisory relationships is designed to make it visible.

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