The call came in the middle of the night to the Business Detective on call.
The scene of the crime: busy, packed boardrooms with polished decks. AI-enabled slides peeking from projection systems as teams pitched to leadership.
The allegation: somewhere between the last quarter update and the next quarter plan, an attempt to murder strategy and growth.
As the case progressed, three clear suspects emerged.
Suspect 1: Endless Night: For this suspect, the tension started long before the actual review date. Endless nights. Endless deck revisions. Somewhere between aligning numbers and perfecting commentary, the narrative slithered away, taking meaning with it.
Suspect 2: Cards on the Table: A closer look showed reviews surviving on hope and prayer. Data appeared selectively, at best. Strategic cards rarely got their place on the table. The room spent more energy defending existing strategies than questioning whether they still held.
Suspect 3: And Then There Were None: This one was hiding in plain sight. A lot of information and plenty of discussion. But when it came to the fatal questions, who and when, the slides drew a blank. Very little ownership. No timelines. No hard choices. More questions than answers.
The detective scratched his head, tried a few prompts as he had been taught, then returned to the scene of the crime. To the deluge of decks piled high. Three cups of tea and forty-five decks later, he let out a shout. "QSQT! Quarter se Quarter Tak! Creeping up. Silently. Slowly."
He called all the leaders in for the denouement and locked the boardroom doors. Anxious faces. The next quarter’s goals were already pounding on the door.
“So what caused the attempted murder?” the leaders asked, as each suspect shrank back a little in the crowded room.
“All three contributed,” the detective replied. “But they are only symptoms. The real cause is context. Or the lack of it.”
“And what solves it?” one leader asked.
“Well,” the detective said quietly, “you already have that answer. My job here is done.”
The room fell silent.
“I think spotting narratives past their expiry date is critical,” one analyst finally spoke up. Sometimes the most important work of a review is to surface the conflict and align on the real narrative before locking numbers.
“Data that speaks, not just overwhelms,” said another. Median, variance. Data needs to live inside the narrative, not sit beside it. Otherwise, it creates motion, not direction.
“And maybe the biggest fix,” someone added, “the Fevicol glue of teams that bond on real problem solving.”
When endless nights are replaced with real cross-functional work. Real cards on the table. And no then there were none.
“Yes,” someone nodded. “Blame games reduce. Execution compounds.”
Goodbye, QSQT. The boardroom doors opened for the next quarter.
At stotio, we step in before QSQT sets in, helping leaders align on the right story, make hard choices, and turn reviews into moments of real directiom.