(2-minute read)

. . . This is a continuation from Part II. Or go back and start with Part I.

PART III

The Outcome (May 2016)

After I discover the launch timeline error and then the imminent loss of CableCo’s marketing claim, it takes three months to get CableCo executives to accept the new information:

1. The SVP of Marketing immediately grasps the import of my emailed Gantt chart: the days of relying on relative speed claims are irrevocably numbered, no matter what CableCo does now. Still, he urges me to mobilize the Product Department to scramble to mitigate the “disaster”.  
2. In contrast, the Product VP dismisses the same Gantt chart as unimportant, deflecting discussion of the new information. One attempt to apprise him of the bad news prompts him to yell, “You’re just a fucking contractor!” . . . in front of the staffing firm Account Manager who had assigned me to the engagement, who remains timidly silent.  
3. The Product SVP also deflects my efforts to warn him, deleting my calendar invite to a meeting titled “Wave 2 router launch not feasible in 2015”. He phones the staffing firm, telling them to tell me to not request meetings with him. He continues publicizing the Q3 2015 launch date, ignorant of its inaccuracy.    
4. The staffing firm opts for short-term appeasement, rather than seizing the lucrative long-term opportunity to advise CableCo on mitigating the product development problem or redressing its causes: “Just let them figure it out after you’re gone.”

In June 2015, the Product VP and SVP unapologetically capitulate to using my corrected Wave 2 router launch date (Q4 2016) in departmental communications. Mere weeks before the originally expected launch date (Q3 2015), the Product Department finally accepts that it has no product to launch.

During the final week of my posting at CableCo, the Product VP takes me to lunch and apologizes for “shooting the messenger”. He proposes hiring me on permanently to lead WiFi Product Development for CableCo, while limiting my inept predecessor’s role to in-market product management. But the two of them are long-time friends, and he reneges when she returns from sabbatical.

Two Engineering VPs spend weeks requisitioning funds to bring me back as a direct consultant (i.e., not through the staffing firm, with whom nobody is pleased). But another big merger proposal freezes their access to funds indefinitely. I move on to a new strategy consulting engagement elsewhere.

The device makers remain professional contacts of mine. They continue to use the “Wave 1.5” nomenclature that I coined.

Competitor Wave 2 devices launch in the US market in Q3 2015 (two DSL providers), Q4 2015 (a different cable operator), and Q1 2016 (a third DSL provider).

Meanwhile, as of May 2016, CableCo has not yet launched a Wave 2 router.   

And the Product Manager responsible for this mess still works at CableCo . . . as a newly promoted Product Director.