The Great Rift Valley Incident: Part 2 - The Implementation
Previously: Derek Hutchins, management consultant, has successfully sold a Lean Six Sigma optimization program to a tribe of early humans. Tomorrow, the transformation begins.
Opening Narration
Dawn breaks over the Great Rift Valley. The ant is positioned on a rock overlooking the tribal settlement. The narrator's voice carries a tone of deep concern.
"Week One of what Derek has termed 'The Transformation Initiative.' In nature, we often observe organisms adapting to their environment. Here, we will observe the opposite: an environment being forced to adapt to an organism that has no business being in it."
The camera pans to Derek, who has constructed a makeshift presentation stand using rocks and animal hide.
"The consultant has been awake since before sunrise, preparing what he calls 'rollout materials.' The tribe, accustomed to rising with the sun to begin hunting, has been asked to delay their departure for what Derek has scheduled as an 'alignment session.'"
Several tribe members look at the horizon, clearly wanting to leave.
"They are confused. They are hungry. And the morning hunting window is closing."
A pause.
"But they have committed to the process. And so, they wait."
Act I: Day One - The Alignment Session
Scene: The Morning Stand-Up
Derek had worked through the night. On the cave wall behind him, he had used charcoal and natural pigments to create what could only be described as a PowerPoint slide rendered in stone age materials.
It read: "TRANSFORMATION = TRUST + PROCESS + COMMITMENT"
Below that, a crude diagram of what might have been a workflow, or possibly a hunting route, or possibly nothing at all.
"Good morning, team!" Derek said, using the voice he reserved for energizing kickoff meetings. "I want to start by saying how excited I am about what we're going to accomplish together."
The fifteen tribe members stood in a loose semicircle, spears in hand, ready to hunt.
Derek gestured at the cave wall.
"What you're looking at here is our transformation equation. Trust plus process plus commitment equals transformation. Now, I want each of you to take a moment and think about what that means to you personally."
Silence.
"Great. I'm feeling a lot of energy in the room. Let's keep that going."
The narrator: "None of them understand what he is saying. The concept of 'energy in the room' has no translation in their proto-language. One of the hunters believes Derek is performing a pre-hunt ritual. Another thinks he might be cursed. Both interpretations will prove partially accurate."
"Before we break for our hunting activities," Derek continued, consulting a scroll of bark he'd repurposed as a notes document, "I want to establish our new daily rhythm. Every morning, we're going to meet here for what I'm calling a Stand-Up Sync. Fifteen minutes, everyone shares what they're working on, any blockers they're facing, and how we can support each other."
He looked around expectantly.
"Who wants to go first?"
The eldest elder—who Derek had begun mentally referring to as "the C-Suite"—made a gesture toward the horizon. The sun was climbing. Game would be moving to shade soon.
"I hear you," Derek said. "Timeline concerns. Valid. But here's the thing: if we don't invest time in process up front, we'll pay for it in inefficiency down the road. Trust me, this fifteen minutes will save us hours."
The narrator: "It will not save them hours. It will cost them the prime hunting window, approximately seventeen pounds of potential game, and the collective patience of the entire tribe. But Derek believes this deeply, with the unshakeable faith of someone who has never been directly responsible for finding his own food."
Scene: The Org Chart
After what turned into a forty-five-minute "brief" morning meeting, Derek unveiled his next initiative: organizational structure.
He had spent part of the night observing the tribe's natural hierarchy. There were the three elders who made decisions. There were the primary hunters—five individuals with clear expertise. There were the gatherers, the tool-makers, the fire-keepers.
Derek had taken this elegant, organic structure and converted it into an organization chart.
On a section of hide stretched across a wooden frame, he had drawn boxes and lines.
At the top: "Executive Council" (the three elders).
Below that: "Director of Hunting Operations" (the most skilled hunter, a man Derek had started calling "DH1" in his notes—the man's actual name was Koro).
Below that: "Senior Hunters" (three individuals) and "Junior Hunters" (two individuals).
To the side: "Support Functions" (everyone else).
"What we're implementing here," Derek explained to the assembled and increasingly bewildered tribe, "is a clear chain of command. Everyone knows who they report to. Everyone knows their swim lane. No more confusion about decision rights."
Koro, the newly appointed Director of Hunting Operations, was staring at the chart. He pointed at himself, then at the two individuals Derek had labeled "Junior Hunters." One of them was his brother. The other was his father.
He made a questioning gesture.
"Yes!" Derek said enthusiastically. "I know this might feel unusual. Your brother and father will now report to you. But that's the beauty of a merit-based system. We promote based on capability, not social dynamics."
The narrator sounds almost impressed by the audacity.
"In a single morning, the consultant has restructured 200,000 years of kinship-based social organization into a corporate hierarchy. Koro's father, a man who taught Koro everything he knows about hunting, is now his subordinate. The brother, who has hunted alongside Koro since childhood, is now two levels below him on a chart drawn on animal hide."
A pause.
"This will go well, I'm sure."
Act II: The First Week - Systems and Processes
Scene: The Pre-Hunt Documentation
Day Two brought Derek's next innovation: the Pre-Hunt Alignment Document.
"Before any hunting party departs," Derek announced during the morning Stand-Up (now running consistently forty minutes), "they need to complete this."
He held up a piece of bark with markings on it.
"It's simple. Intended target, estimated timeline, resource requirements, backup plans, and success metrics. Just fill it out, bring it to me for approval, and then you're cleared to depart."
The hunters stared.
"I'll walk DH1 through the first one," Derek said, gesturing for Koro to approach.
They spent twenty minutes on the form. Derek asked questions: "What's your fallback if the primary target isn't available?" and "Have you considered weather dependencies?" and "What's your risk mitigation strategy for predator encounters?"
Koro answered as best he could through gestures and the few words of shared understanding they'd developed. Derek took notes.
Finally, Derek signed the bark with a ceremonial flourish.
"Approved. Great work on the planning, DH1. This is exactly the kind of rigor we need."
The hunting party departed two hours later than usual.
They caught nothing.
The narrator: "The Pre-Hunt Alignment Document has introduced a two-hour delay to a process that previously required no documentation whatsoever. The hunters, accustomed to reading weather and animal patterns in real-time, have spent their cognitive energy answering theoretical questions about scenarios that may never occur. By the time they reached the hunting grounds, the herd had moved on."
Scene: The Performance Dashboard
By Day Four, Derek had completed his masterwork: The Performance Dashboard.
On the largest cave wall, visible to anyone entering or leaving the settlement, Derek had created a tracking system.
Three columns, labeled (through symbols and Derek's enthusiastic explanation) as GREEN, YELLOW, and RED.
Below each column, spaces for individual hunter names (represented by symbols Derek had assigned to each person).
"This is how we maintain accountability," Derek explained during the morning Stand-Up (now forty-five minutes). "After each hunt, we'll evaluate performance and place your marker in the appropriate column."
"Green means you met or exceeded targets. Yellow means you're performing adequately but there's room for improvement. Red means we need to have a coaching conversation about getting back on track."
He pointed at the empty columns.
"Right now, everyone starts at Yellow. That's our baseline. Prove yourself into Green. Don't drop to Red."
The narrator: "In their previous system, a successful hunter was known through respect, through the food they brought back, through the stories told around fires. Now, they will be known by the color column in which their symbol appears on a cave wall. This is what Derek would call 'transparency.' Nature would call it 'public shaming.'"
Scene: The First Performance Review
The first hunter to be placed in the Red column was Uktar—the young man who had been among the first to greet Derek.
Uktar had been on three hunts in five days. One successful, two unsuccessful. By traditional standards, this was normal. Hunting was difficult. Some days you succeeded, some days you didn't.
By Derek's dashboard standards, Uktar was 33% effective.
"Let's talk about what's happening here," Derek said, pulling Uktar aside after the evening Stand-Up (a new addition: fifteen minutes to review the day and plan for tomorrow).
Uktar looked confused.
Derek pointed at the cave wall, at Uktar's symbol in the red column.
"I know you're trying. I can see the effort. But we need to talk about outcome-focused performance. It's not about activity, it's about results."
Uktar made a gesture that roughly translated to: "Sometimes the animals don't appear."
"I hear you bringing up external factors," Derek said, in the tone he used for underperforming team members. "And yes, there are variables we can't control. But there are also variables we can control. Your preparation. Your positioning. Your technique. Let's focus on those."
He pulled out a piece of bark.
"I'm putting you on a 30-day Performance Improvement Plan. Each hunt, we're going to document your approach, identify areas for development, and track your progress. At the end of thirty days, we'll reassess."
The narrator: "Uktar has no idea he has just been placed on probation. But he understands that his symbol on the wall is a different color than the others, and that Derek seems disappointed. For a young hunter still learning his skills, this is devastating. His confidence, the crucial ingredient in successful hunting, has been damaged by a metric system that reduces the complex act of hunting to a percentage."
Act III: Week One Retrospective
Scene: The Friday All-Hands
Derek had designated the seventh day as "Weekly Retrospective and Strategic Planning Day."
The entire tribe was required to attend.
They sat in a circle as Derek stood at his cave wall presentation area.
"Let's talk about our wins this week," Derek began, consulting his bark notes. "First: we've successfully implemented our new organizational structure. Clear reporting lines. Everyone knows their role. That's huge."
"Second: we've established baseline processes. Pre-hunt documentation. Daily stand-ups. Performance tracking. The infrastructure is in place."
He paused for effect.
"Now let's talk about areas of opportunity."
He turned to a new section of cave wall where he had been tracking metrics.
"Week over week, we're seeing a 31% decline in successful hunts compared to historical averages."
The tribe shifted uncomfortably. They were hungry. The decline was not abstract to them.
"I want to be clear: this is normal," Derek said with absolute confidence. "When you're implementing significant process changes, you always see a dip in productivity. It's called the change curve. We're in the valley right now. But once these new processes become habits, we're going to see performance shoot up beyond where we started."
The narrator, dryly: "There is no evidence to support this claim. Derek has produced this trajectory from pure faith. The change curve he references is a concept from organizational psychology that assumes the changes being implemented are improvements. This assumption has not been tested."
"What I need from all of you," Derek continued, making eye contact around the circle, "is patience and trust. Trust the process. The process works. I've seen it work in dozens of organizations."
One of the elders—the one Derek had mentally categorized as the "CFO"—made a gesture toward the stores of dried meat. They were running lower than usual.
"I hear your concern about resources," Derek said. "And that's exactly why we need to stay disciplined about the process. If we abandon the system now, we'll never know if it could have worked. Let's commit to the full transformation timeline—six weeks—and then evaluate."
The narrator: "The elder was not expressing concern. She was stating a fact: at their current rate of hunting success, they will not have enough food stored for the coming seasonal change. This is not a theoretical business problem. This is survival. But Derek has interpreted it through his familiar framework: stakeholder management and commitment to timelines."
Scene: Evening - Private Doubt
That night, after the tribe had dispersed to their evening tasks, Koro—the Director of Hunting Operations—approached Derek.
He made a series of gestures. Pointed at the performance wall. Pointed at the other hunters. Made a motion that clearly indicated stress or concern.
"You're worried about morale," Derek interpreted. "I get it. This is the hardest part. But here's what I need you to understand."
He pulled Koro aside, sat him down.
"You're a leader now. Not just a hunter—a leader. And leaders have to make hard decisions. Yes, some people are going to be uncomfortable with the new system. Yes, there's going to be resistance. But great leaders push through that resistance because they can see the bigger picture."
Koro listened, understanding perhaps one word in five, but reading Derek's tone.
"I need you to be my champion here," Derek said. "When people complain, when they want to go back to the old ways, I need you to remind them why we're doing this. Can you do that for me?"
Koro hesitated, then made a gesture that Derek interpreted as agreement.
"That's what I'm talking about," Derek said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Leadership."
The narrator: "Koro did not agree. Koro expressed uncertainty. But Derek, fluent only in the language of corporate confidence, heard what he needed to hear. And so Koro, a skilled hunter who has never asked to manage anyone, has now been drafted into the role of enforcing a system he doesn't understand, for reasons he can't articulate, to achieve goals that have not been clearly defined."
A pause.
"In nature, we call this 'parasitism.'"
Act IV: End of Week One
Scene: The Sunday Strategy Session
Derek spent his evening reviewing his notes by firelight. In his bark journal, he had documented the week:
- Organizational structure: ✓ Implemented
- Daily stand-ups: ✓ Established
- Pre-hunt documentation: ✓ In use
- Performance dashboard: ✓ Active
- 360 feedback process: ⧗ Planned for Week 2
Under "Challenges," he had noted:
- "Some resistance to change (expected)"
- "Initial productivity dip (within normal range)"
- "Communication barriers (improving)"
Under "Wins," he had written:
- "Strong buy-in from leadership (DH1 fully committed)"
- "Infrastructure successfully deployed"
- "Foundation for transformation complete"
He underlined that last phrase twice.
The narrator: "Derek's notes and reality have now diverged entirely. In his documentation, transformation is proceeding according to plan. In reality, the tribe is hungry, confused, and beginning to doubt whether the strange man with the briefcase is a prophet or a curse."
The camera pulls back to show the settlement at night. Fires burn. People gather in small groups, speaking in low voices. On the performance wall, most symbols have migrated to Yellow or Red.
Derek sits alone, reviewing his documentation, completely satisfied with the week's progress.
"Week Two," the narrator says quietly, "will bring metrics."
A long pause.
"May their gods have mercy."
To Be Continued...
Next in the series: Part 3 - The Crisis, where Derek introduces advanced measurement systems, the hunters stage a proto-rebellion, and efficiency drops to catastrophic levels.
Coming next week.