Invisible World
With a soup-bowl-sized cup of coffee in hand Rave Maps, the world’s greatest value engineer, stood watching as dawn broke over the Atlantic Ocean.
Rave breathed in fresh, salt-tinged morning air as her thoughts ran to value engineering, as they often did. This was both a blessing and a curse, based on a lifetime of experience working in information technology, IT.
Whatever.
The point is, Rave’s work is defined by an ‘invisible world’ of IT infrastructure that powers our consumer lives.
Some might refer to this invisible world as simple ‘logistics.’ That would be partly true. Some may describe it as a ‘cold chain,’ a ‘distribution system,’ or ‘global supply chain.’ All of that is true. But these mundane descriptions don’t capture the magic she sees. Rave glanced down at her phone, which displayed over one hundred ‘apps,’ each coming from a different company. To Rave, each application represented the top of a mountain. Standing beneath each of those mountaintops, propping them up, are thousands of IT professionals.
Those developers, administrators, and operations staff are working in-turn with thousands of electronic systems spanning the history of technology from mainframe to cloud. This complex, hybrid, and fragile infrastructure must be orchestrated to ensure data is shared perfectly. All the pieces must function correctly and be available 24x7 so that we consumer end users can purchase socks, book a flight, renew a driver's license, and deposit a check all with a simple tap.
You flip a switch and a light turns on. Every time.
This is the invisible world of global supply chains powered by IT, software, hardware, and value engineering.
Finding a way to harness all this capability and meet human desires with technology comes from our being able to gather data, understand the ‘customer journey,’ define a company brand, and build stories that motivate people to change what they do, and how they do it.
Rave’s small firm, Maps Private Value is the best in the world at value engineering. She gathers data from customers, helping them tell stories that drive change. She’s never failed and has never let a customer down. Not once. Not ever. She could not allow that to happen.
Rave’s hotel phone rang interrupting her morning reverie. She stepped back into her room to pick up.
“This is Rave.”
"I’m very sorry Dr. Maps."
The voice belonged to the prospect whose business Rave had been working hard to win over the past two weeks: Adalberto Joaozinho, IT Director at Sacqui Group Lisbon.
"Listen," Joaozinho continued. Rave detected a dialect she’d heard before in his European Portuguese, one that marked a boyhood spent in a former Portuguese colony. It became more pronounced when he was nervous. He’d probably grown up on one of the Cabo Verde islands.
"Your proposal is professional and compelling but we have a hiccup, and the decision is out of my hands. Procurement determined a competing proposal is more closely aligned with our future direction.”
Rave said nothing. Often, silence proves a useful technique; people normally feel compelled to fill the void with additional explanation.
But not today.
“Thank you for your efforts, Ms. Maps; we do appreciate it. I wish you well. Bom Dia, Good Day."
Rave was stunned; she could not believe what she’d just heard. Word-of-mouth marketing meant everything in this business. Clients knew from experience her value engineering fee repays itself in multiples as organizations future-proof IT infrastructure and successfully meet changing business demands. Sometimes her work brings hope for change to beleaguered IT staff resigned to a future of hopelessness, mired in the daily grind of repetitive, manual tasks supporting one arcane process, playing a small part keeping the invisible world functioning.
Rave stared in silence at the vintage black Bakelite telephone, slowly replacing the receiver in its cradle. She’d been working from Madeira at her own expense for two weeks. There had been no hint of competing proposals from other firms in her discussions with the client. The research she’d collected would have been a help to them. Sacqui was facing new financial technology – FinTech -- challenges that would impact their portfolio companies, all of whom are facing business disruption over the next several years. She’d been preparing a statement of work for the firm. They had requested she pitch them on several workstreams. They wanted to modernize their IT estate. They also wanted her to build a business case supporting the investment committee’s due diligence as they built a first-round tranche structure for a collateralized debt obligation that would quietly pool revenue-generating assets in support of a new investment in an artificial intelligence startup. Rapid change was coming from every direction, including AI, automated cryptocurrency compliance, and advanced fraud detection. Rave knew better than anyone the benefits new technologies might deliver. She also knew “the sale begins at “No.” And yet, it appeared she’d now lost the chance to prove herself. Why?
What a way to begin the morning.
Rave stepped out once more onto her balcony. Porto Cliff Bay is a luxury spa hotel perched on a cliff above the Atlantic Ocean, an ideal place to office remotely. Incredible morning views.
Looking across the bay lifted her spirits. Tranquil silver-gray waves spread to the horizon as the sun rose and Funchal, largest city on the island, came awake.
Rave had enjoyed her time on the Portuguese island, part of a volcanic mountain archipelago 400 miles off the coast of Morocco in the North Atlantic. Delicious foods paired perfectly with the local wine and warm hospitality of every Madeiran she’d met. She’d come to favor the mellow, acidic dry white wine pressed from flavorful Verdelho grapes growing in small vineyards on the cool, north side of the island.
Rave combined work with some of her favorite pursuits, as she tried to do in every country she visited. She had enjoyed the 15-minute ride on the Teleferico do Funchal. The cable car begins in downtown Funchal, rising ten thousand feet to the exotic Jardim Botanico and Monte Palace Gardens where she lingered over lush azaleas, orchids, protea, Scottish heather, and cycads.
Gardens in Madeira flourish even though water on the island comes exclusively from captured rainfall collected in the island's Levadas, a network of irrigation canals built by hand over four hundred years ago and stretching hundreds of miles through the mountainous interior. The Levadas were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999.
Rave slipped into a swimsuit, dropped her sunglasses, journal, and towel into a beach tote, and descended to pool level, riding down the tiny elevator. She made her way across the expansive sun deck, ignoring sly glances from pampered German and French guests. They were reclined on lounge chairs, enjoying their morning reading, sleeping, or working on their tans. She walked over to the wharf and stood watching the sea. Light chop driven by an Atlantic breeze lapped the wall fifteen feet below. Executing a graceful dive into clear blue water, she swam for the raft anchored offshore, pulling herself up to admire the view of the bay.
Across the cove sat Belmond Reid’s Palace. Its pink walls stand out from the dark, rocky cliff. She could see the private bathing pier and old waterside entrance to the former British Imperial hotel. Looking higher, she picked out the balcony where Churchill spent a few days in 1950 smoking cigars, working to finish his fourth volume of war memories: The Hinge of Fate.
After her swim, Rave took breakfast outside in the garden of Cliff Bay's Michelin 2-star Il Gallo d'Oro resto. Peering at the ocean she heard the lap of waves below, felt the sun and ocean breeze against her face, and heard bees buzzing, pollinating orchids beside her. Magical. She ordered a tumbler of strong local Poncha to accompany breakfast. Made from Aguardente de cana rum, orange juice, lemon, and honey, the storied cocktail had a well-deserved reputation on the island. Rave raised her glass in a silent toast to the sea and to moving forward, then ordered the full English breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, tomatoes, and mushrooms, to which she added two sweet Pastel de Nata custard tarts. She would need fuel for today's hike to Caldeirao Verde; a trail crossing steep, mountainous, and wet rainforest on the north side of Madeira.
As the food arrived Rave put her journal away and studied the colorful tumble of orchids, roses, and bougainvillea by her table. She noticed a two-masted, 62-foot replica of Columbus' ship Santa Maria beat its way east. It had been constructed to resemble Columbus’s famed 15th Century cargo Nau displacing 150 metric tons, bound for the tourist marina in Funchal.
As the great ship slid silently past, Rave replayed the call with Joaozinho in her mind. She had no competitors rivaling her differentiated skillset combining listening, observation, analysis, research, data collection, storytelling, and problem-solving. She brought her clients her interest in understanding their emotional needs and personal wins. These were the unspoken goals motivating leaders to drive change and commit significant budgets to innovation.
Rave’s job often is to just keep her clients’ names out of the paper. They need the work done correctly, ensuring they avoid fines that arise from a breached service level agreements (SLA), or from incurring embarrassing IT downtime. Not to mention avoiding customer complaints. Her recommendations normally require organizations adopt significant change.
Rave knew from experience when we introduce change to an organization, over a hundred people “have their hands on the brake.” Resistance to change is part of human nature. Her goal was to help clients overcome that resistance, building powerful strategies and sharing a compelling future vision leaders may use to create excitement.
Something had gone wrong with this Sacqui Group opportunity. That had been a first for Rave. She was determined to find out what the problem was, and where it had come from.
After breakfast, she headed to her room to dress for hiking. She grabbed a pair of trail runners and slipped on her quick-dry performance shirt and shorts. She filled a water bottle and knotted a length of SurvivorCord to wear as a necklace. The military grade 550 paracord was woven with individual strands including a paraffin-twisted jute fire starter, 25-lb monofilament fishing line, and metallic alloy utility wire.
The front desk called to let her know her driver had arrived.
