“So, who is going to authorize the weighted average costing method for the sub-assemblies in the new production run?”
– Opening Query, Klang Boardroom
Although the air conditioning in the Klang boardroom was humming with its usual industrial indifference, the silence that followed my question was heavy with a desultory sort of tension. I looked at the owner, Mr. Tan, who was currently preoccupied with a loose thread on his shirt sleeve.
He looked at the new accounts executive, a young woman named Sarah who had been on the job for exactly . Sarah, understandably, looked at the production manager, who simply shrugged and adjusted his glasses.
“Chloe was handling all the costing logic,” the production manager said, his voice flat. “She knew how the sofa frames were tracked through the spray booth. I just manage the wood.”
Although the project plan still showed a go-live date only away, the sudden absence of Chloe-the energetic finance manager who had been the beating heart of this digital transformation-had turned our steering meeting into a ghost ship.
Chloe had resigned for a “better opportunity” at a multinational in Singapore, and with her went the only internal conviction that this implementation actually mattered. The project hadn’t failed yet, but it had lost its reason to exist, drifting into a cycle of deferred decisions and polite nods.
The 2 AM Chirp: Early Warning Systems
It reminded me of the smoke detector battery I had to change at last Tuesday. Although I was half-blind with sleep and stumbling through the hallway, that repetitive, high-pitched chirp demanded an immediate, singular focus that no other household sound could command.
A project champion like Chloe is that chirp; she is the constant, annoying reminder that things must change, that data must be cleaned, and that the old ways of “estimating” costs on the back of a cigarette pack are over. When that sound stops, the house doesn’t burn down immediately, but you lose the early warning system that keeps you safe from a slow-motion disaster.
Although we often treat ERP implementations as purely technical exercises in software configuration, they are actually fragile ecosystems of human willpower, prone to a cognitive apophenia where we see progress in the form of signed documents while ignoring the rot in the team’s morale. We mistake the consultant’s presence for the client’s commitment.
The Fragile Ecosystem: Software is only the vessel; human conviction provides the propulsion.
In this furniture factory, we were building a complex discrete manufacturing model in NetSuite, involving intricate bills of materials (BOM) and work orders that needed to track everything from high-grade timber to the specific screws used in a designer armchair. Without Chloe to bridge the gap between the accounts office and the shop floor, the system was just a collection of empty tables and unmapped fields.
Conducting the “Conviction Audit”
The problem is that energy is a poor substitute for infrastructure. Although Chloe’s enthusiasm was infectious, it was also a veil that concealed the fact that nobody else in the organization understood why we were doing this.
To the production manager, the ERP was a “Finance project.” To Mr. Tan, it was an “LHDN compliance thing” to satisfy the new e-invoicing mandates. To the rest of the staff, it was a nuisance that required them to log their hours more accurately.
Although it feels counterintuitive to slow down when a project is already behind schedule, the departure of a champion requires an immediate “conviction audit.” This is a process where we stop talking about timelines and start talking about skin in the game.
In my years of
I have seen dozens of projects enter this inchoate state of limbo where the contract is active, the checks are being cleared, but the soul has left the building.
The Decision-Making Web
The technical digression of how this actually works is simple: Decision-making in a system project isn’t a hierarchy; it’s a web. When you map out a process-let’s say, how a manufacturer in Johor handles the rejection of raw materials from a vendor-you need three things:
- The person who does the work (Production)
- The person who pays for the work (Accounts)
- The person who defines the “Truth” (the Champion)
If the Champion is the only one who cares about the Truth, the other two will revert to their most comfortable, least transparent habits the moment she leaves. We call this “institutional regression,” and it is the primary killer of Malaysian SME digitisation.
Although the quondam finance manager had been the one pushing for better inventory visibility, the production manager now saw an opportunity to claw back his “freedom” from the system’s scrutiny. He didn’t want the system to track the scrap rate of the leather offcuts; he wanted to keep doing it in his private notebook.
This is why a project cannot be built on the shoulders of one person, no matter how talented they are. Shared ownership is not a “nice-to-have” corporate buzzword; it is the only arrangement that survives a resignation letter.
Path of Least Resistance: A Consultant’s Confession
Although we had been working with Mr. Tan’s team for months, I realized I had committed a classic consultant’s error: I had let Chloe become my only point of contact for the “hard” questions. It was easier to talk to her because she understood the logic of cloud ERP and the necessity of real-time data.
But by choosing the path of least resistance, I had inadvertently helped her build a silo of knowledge that was now empty.
Although the humidity of the Klang Valley was beginning to seep into the room as someone opened a window, the atmosphere remained stifling. We spent forty minutes discussing the same three costing options we had “finalized” a month ago.
Every time I reached for a conclusion, someone would perform a verbal tergiversation, shifting the responsibility back to a ghost.
“Chloe said we should use standard costing,” the production manager would mutter, followed by, “But I don’t see how that works for custom orders.”
The temptation in these moments is to take the decision for them. As a consultant, I could have easily dictated the costing method and moved on to the next slide. Although that would have kept the project moving on paper, it would have been a pusillanimous move that guaranteed a failure at the go-live stage.
From Frantic Drive to Gritty Responsibility
Although many leaders fear that involving more people will lead to internecine conflicts and slower progress, the opposite is true. When we forced Mr. Tan and his production lead to sit down and actually define how they wanted to see their margins, the project regained a different kind of energy.
It wasn’t Chloe’s frantic, high-octane drive; it was a slow, gritty realization of collective responsibility. We had to go back to the “Process Alignment” phase-the very first step of our framework-and re-examine the shop floor reality without a translator.
Phase 1: Champion-Led
High speed, low transparency, fragile single-point knowledge.
Phase 2: Committee-Led
Slow but authentic, high accountability, shared language.
Although the factory was still churning out furniture, the data we were collecting began to feel real for the first time. We weren’t just checking boxes to satisfy a NetSuite configuration; we were solving a problem that Mr. Tan finally understood.
He realized that without this system, he couldn’t tell if his new line of premium office chairs was actually profitable or if he was just subsidizing his customers’ luxury at the expense of his own margins.
Although the liminal space between a champion leaving and a team stepping up is uncomfortable, it is where the real transformation happens. We had to stop treating the ERP as a software installation and start treating it as a cultural shift.
This meant that Sarah, the new accounts exec, had to be empowered to ask “dumb” questions, and the production manager had to be held accountable for the accuracy of his wood stock.
The susurrus of doubt that had filled the room began to fade. We didn’t replace Chloe with another Chloe; we replaced her with a steering committee that actually had to steer. It was painful, it was slow, and it involved several heated arguments about how to categorize the cost of wood glue, but it was authentic.
Although we are now deep into the “Operational Adoption” phase, the ghost of Chloe no longer haunts our meetings. Her resignation was actually the best thing that could have happened to the project, because it stripped away the illusion of progress and forced the leadership to look at the cracks in their own commitment. They discovered that they didn’t need a single champion; they needed a shared language.
Standing on Their Own Feet
Although the transition was difficult, the result is a system that mirrors how the company actually works, rather than how one manager thought it should work. The costing method we eventually settled on wasn’t “Chloe’s method” or “the consultant’s method.”
It was the “BlackOak and Tan Furniture” method. It was a palimpsest of old experience and new technology, written by the people who actually have to live with the results every day.
The empty chair where conviction used to sit eventually becomes the most expensive piece of furniture in the factory.
Although there is still work to do, the foundation is now solid. When the go-live date finally arrives, it won’t be a celebration of a software launch, but a celebration of an organization that learned how to stand on its own feet.
Resilience is not the absence of turnover; it is the presence of a structure that doesn’t collapse when one person leaves the room. Conviction is a shared currency.
