Bain studied business transformations last year and found that only twelve percent of them hit what they originally set out to do. Symon and Marcello have watched good designs fail on the exact same kind of project, and it's almost never the technology. It's the same four questions nobody thought to ask before the work started. In this episode, Symon and Marcello unpack the framework they built to catch those four gaps before a project ships: Humans, Objectives, Landscape, Organization, or HOLO. This isn't a story about bad luck or bad design. It's the harder truth: most stalled projects get rebriefed and redesigned without anyone going back to find out why they didn't stick the first time. Along the way, they walk through real examples from their own client work: an e-commerce shipping complaint that turned out to be a warehouse problem, a fintech product that looked strong but missed the accessibility bar its competitors already cleared, and a manufacturing company that tried to bolt on an e-commerce model its team wasn't set up to run.
💡 Key Topics:
✦ The twelve percent: Bain found only 12% of business transformations achieved what they set out to do, and the failure almost never traces back to the technology itself (Bain)
✦ The average user doesn't exist: why designing for a blended, middle-of-the-road user misses the real audience, and how splitting people into primary, secondary, and tertiary groups, internal staff included, changes what gets built
✦ The checkout bug that wasn't a checkout bug: an e-commerce client's shipping-time complaints at checkout traced back to warehouse location and staffing, not the API
✦ Why hitting the goal can still mean losing: the gap between a quarter's conversion-rate target and a company's real objective of keeping customers around
✦ The floor you're not allowed to fall below: a fintech client's brand and interface looked strong but missed the accessibility and security bar competitors already clear
✦ Vision outruns execution: what happens when a manufacturing company tries to add an e-commerce revenue model without the team or workflows to run it
✦ The one move to make this week: run your last finished project back through Humans, Objectives, Landscape, and Organization and see where the real gaps were
📖 Chapters:
0:00 — 12% Hit Their Target
0:11 — Why the Same Four Gaps Repeat
2:52 — Humans: The Average User Trap
5:23 — Objectives: When Goals Don't Line Up
7:26 — Landscape: The Floor You Can't Fall Below
10:04 — Organization: Can They Actually Run It
11:35 — Verdict: Run Your Last Project Back Through HOLO
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