American View: Do you want to help me start a new cult?

Future of Enterprise06 Jul 2026

I have a diabolical idea and I’m inviting all of you to get in on it with me. Ever wanted to throw a metaphorical spanner into the equally metaphorical gears of your (or someone else’s) company?

I have a diabolical idea and I’m inviting all of you to get in on it with me. Ever wanted to throw a metaphorical spanner into the equally metaphorical gears of your (or someone else’s) company? Ever gotten sick of too much success and stability? If you said “yes,” than either powerful medications or a Process Improvement Methodology (PIM) may be your ticket to workplace greatness! Or to being torn limb from limb by an angry mob. Either way, you’ll get a promotion at someone else’s expense.

This all came to mind last week when my oldest mentioned that his employer was implementing a new enterprise-wide PIM. He told me that he and his team had been directed from on high to label every object in their workspaces because that would – through MAAAAAAAAAGIC! – reverse the company’s declining profits. My kid asked his boss why this seemingly meaningless task was being prioritised over their mission – to ship product to retailers – and was given the traditional PIM justification: “It’s because of the ‘six peas’ so shut up and do it!”

I recognized the nonsense straightaway: the “peas” that were being referenced to justify the busywork were the “six Ps” … a.k.a., a cutesy way to structure and guide discussions with your company’s customers about what they really want so you can – in theory – sell that better product to them. According to the first site that appeared in my search, “The Ps stand for the persona, problem, proposition, positioning, product, and promotion strategy.” Supposedly, according to the PIM’s writers, framing your product research around these concepts will “unlock strategic insight” or something.

The “Six Ps” are a part of Lean Product Development, the methodology that Toyota famously used to overhaul their manufacturing and sales processes to reduce waste and improve profitability. The various “Lean” branded PIMs are all an evolution of Frederick Tayloy’s Scientific Management theories from a century back. ^[1]

Maybe that approach works; I neither know nor care since I don’t work in sales or marketing. What’s hilarious is that my oldest doesn’t either: he’s a logistician, for [BLEEP]’s sake! His team schedules third party trucking companies to haul loads of goods that have already been purchased from their warehouses and distribution centres to a buyer’s warehouses and distribution centres. My oldest and his team have zero input on product research … so what the hell? Why should they waste their time with this?

… when there are so many other mandatory activities to waste their time on?

It’s now mandatory, because someone at my oldest’s company decided to employ Lean Product doctrine to improve profitability and/or reduce waste. Fine. Cool idea, bro. Unfortunately, the implementation of the process either wasn’t understood or wasn’t designed properly. Underlings in logistics were ordered to stop shipping product in favour of putting labels on office supplies. In short, upper management announced a new religion, but their mid-level clergy didn’t understand the scripture and focused on the trappings and rituals instead.

This wasn’t an error; that’s how Process Improvement Methodologies get sold! You make more money as a consultant if you can convince an entire company to undergo a colossal transformation then you can by just teaching the people who need to know. It’s the “all or nothing” value proposition; when parts of your magic methodology don’t fit the people it’s being forced on, those people must be compelled to pretend if they want to stay employed.

I’ve lived through a bunch of botched PIM deployments, and they’ve all failed for the same reasons: someone at the top championed implementing what seemed to be an effective solution to improve quality (and, thereby, business success). The champion tried to retrofit their organisation while maintaining its legacy processes. Mid- and low- level workers didn’t have time or interest to learn the dense scripture behind the new “miracle methods” so they did what everyone does: they approached the problem like they were joining a cargo cult: chant the words, do the dance, and prosperity will miraculously manifest. Lots of time and effort squandered for no benefit.

Every time I’ve been dragged into one of these initiatives, the implementers had always been selected for their evangelical zeal. They were believers; they trusted the scripture to deliver fantastic results … but zeal alone couldn’t get the job done. The implementers “sell” not just the desired outcome, but the arcane science of transformation to jaded and sceptical workers. So, just like my eldest being forced to learn about “Six Ps,” each PIM has its secrets that require its own learned clergy to decipher for the masses. These clergy are almost always outside consultants who – say it with me! – will take every shilling in your bank account to “assist” your organisation in achieving its holy transformation.

To be totally transparent, I’ve been on both sides of the process. Enough times that I’ve got the schtick down … enough to scramble all the big PIMs together into something just as profitable but legally unique from a copyright perspective. Sure, it would be a kick in the head for anyone daft enough to hire me to terrorise and destroy their organisation but it would be lucrative … So, sure. Why not? I’d love to have a crate full of banknotes to lounge in like Scrooge McDuck. How about we make our own PIM and get rich “facilitating” it for FORTUNE 500 clients?

You know American business schools’ motto: “Get rich or negligently kill innocent bystanders trying.”

My totally original new Process Improvement Methodology is an legally distinct evolution of Lean. I call it “Cinco Theta” since everyone knows that Spanish + Greek = Business English. Is that true? Hell if I know! It sure sounds profound (especially to Americans who only speak one language).

I’ll advertise that Cinco Theta – pronounced sēŋ-kō thē-tə, with emphasis on the “thē” – is a modern iteration of the secret techniques employed by ancient Greek merchant sailors who dominated trade in the Cádiz region of Iberia during the Late Bronze age. Is this historically accurate? Some of it is! Most of it is merde I made up to sell more consulting contracts.

Cinco Theta is full-immersion program that will completely transform your business by forcing your staff to spend every working minute or the workday participating in painstakingly documented meetings. Success comes from reframing every aspect of your business processes in the framework of the Five Ts:

The 5 x Ts: are Thankful Talent Tearfully Trading Truth, and of course it’s bog-standard cult-y doctrine. Even though these words are completely obvious at a secondary school reading level, we’ve turned them into eldritch secrets that only our £900/hour implementation partners can unlock. Within the doctrine, the Ts can be understood to mean:

Thankful: the key leaders and implementers of your Cinco Theta program should be managers who are desperate to stay employed: single working Americans with children are the best fit, as they’ll be financially ruined if they lose their pay cheque and benefits. You can convince these vulnerable pawns to do anything you want, from destructive layoffs to mandatory unpaid overtime. Always ensure your key influencers have no better options and they’ll move mountains to keep sleeping indoors!

Talent: this is a polite way of saying “exploitable human capital.” Clearly, your workers are your greatest asset. They’re also fungible assets in a global economy that’s about to crash when the AI bubble bursts. The disposable heroes will cheerfully wear the robes, chant the songs, and toe the line because doing stupid things for money beats making no money at all.

Every American who doesn’t come from generational wealth is one missed deadline away from losing everything … by design.

Tearfully: This is where the first two Ts align: everyone involved in the implementation – the leaders and the followers alike – must be compelled to confess all their performance failures in every documented encounter. Every missed deadline, every bad decision, every misunderstanding and miscommunication … You’ll want to build a library of documented failings under the guise of “transparency” and ‘accountability” that can be leveraged as justification to demote or dispose of anyone that fails to demote total commitment to the program.

Trading: Nothing is more important in the workplace than meetings! Not making things, not selling things, and certainly not supporting things you’re sold. No, you want the majority of your workers continuously bogged down preparing for meetings, sitting in meetings, recovering from meetings, and scheduling meetings. When everyone is completely saturated with work about work, there won’t be any time left to perform any work (thereby preemptively eliminating administrative errors entirely!).

Truth: Finally, it’s crucial that every statement made in every meeting be meticulously fact checked by an army of dyspeptic auditors. It should be impossible for any critical process to begin until every last “i” has been dotted and every “t” crossed. This will bring production to a dead halt, eradicating all potential manufacturing defects as a side effect … but it will still look fabulous on your end-of-year performance review!

Sure, there will be a long and expensive implementation period … say, five to ten years where nothing gets made and nothing gets sold. That’s good, though! This deliberate overhaul of your business will ensure that when you finally return to the markets, your products will be the best on the market (even if your competitors have completely dominated said market during your absence). Remember, modest success and solvency are the enemies of hypothetical perfection!

So, get on board with Cinco Theta today! Sign up – and pay me a modest (but reimbursable) £50,000 application fee – today and I’ll help you become a highly-paid Theta Implementation Consultant certified by Keil (or T.I.C.K.) so you can get out there and charge your corporate customers a staggering among of money for “profess improvements.” You, too, can deliver the sort of résumé bullets that will land your clients fabulously lucrative new gigs … where they’ll hire you again to repeat the process. Everybody at the top gets rich. In the end, that’s what business is all about, right?

^[1] I teach Taylorism and its defining impact on corpo culture in my summer intern curriculum. I wrote about that earlier this year.