Incident
Something just broke in public.
A system incident exposed what nobody could see. Leadership needs to know how deep it goes before the next one.
Kadence Group · Advisory and build
We remove the bottleneck.
You get back to green.
Stalled programs carry three problems at once: operational, political, and technology. Nobody inside can name all three out loud. We do. Then we fix them in the right order, with your team.
Twenty years inside programs at
- IBM
- Coca-Cola
- TD Ameritrade
- Medtronic
- BlueCross
- AmerisourceBergen
- GORE
- CenturyLink
- AbbVie
- Allergan
$1.6M to $2.4M
Annual drag found inside one MedTech Salesforce org
$4.5M
Savings from a Salesforce center of excellence Mike led for a national telecom carrier
75+
Enterprise engagements over 20 years
Point of view
Every stalled program has three problems tangled together.
Most firms fix the one they sell. Technology firms fix technology. Change firms fix process. The program stays yellow because the other two problems are still there.
The operational bottleneck is how the work really runs. Teams keep their own version of the truth. Handoffs have no owner. The system of record isn't one.
The political bottleneck is who is pulling which way. The sponsor and the integrator want different outcomes. Nobody says so in the steering meeting, so the status slide stays yellow.
The technology bottleneck is what the platform can carry. It can usually carry the plan. Two or three overdue changes are holding up everything built on top.
Somebody has to name all three out loud, put a dollar figure on each, and fix them in the order that unblocks the rest. That is the work.
When leaders call us
Three moments when the truth can't wait
New leader
You just inherited it.
New role, or a deal just closed. Risk you didn't create. You need a read before you own the outcome.
Stalled rollout
The AI or platform rollout stalled.
The pilot looked good. Production did not. You need forensics, not another roadmap.
How to work with us
Three ways in. One goal.
Start where the program is. Every engagement begins with a read, and every read ends with an order of fixes.
4 to 8 weeks
The read
We name the three bottlenecks, put a dollar figure on each, and hand you the Fix-First Sequence. It runs on Business MRI, the method Mike built from 75+ engagements.
Embedded term
Forward deployed architecture
A senior architect inside your program. Makes the calls, unblocks the integrator, and builds with your team until it's green.
After the read
Build and enablement
We run the fixes with your people, set the operating rhythm, and leave your team able to own it.
Why now
Usual frame: AI is the problem.
AI is the pressure surfacing the problem. The problem is older than AI, and so is the work of fixing it.
The companies that slow down to retool will multiply with AI. The ones that don't will stall. We help the ones who decide to slow down.
Who does the work
Mike Sommer
- 20 years
- 75+ engagements
- Former Senior Director, IBM
- CGEIT
- Stanford GSB
The person you meet does the work.
Kadence Group is my advisory and build firm. I've spent twenty years inside large enterprise programs, most of them in regulated industries. Diagnosis first, always. Then the build, in the right order.
See what's real. Build what's next.
If a program is stuck, start with one conversation.