Last week was a difficult week in the office with a number of day-to-day issues going the wrong way. As the week drew to close I found myself feeling low and faced with a 4-hour drive home.

On the way home I indulged in some negative brainstorming around people’s job titles e.g. Director of Infuriating Customers and Head of Senseless Processes. This didn’t get me very far but got me thinking about progress in delivering our long-term objectives. I tried to come up with the right analogy for this multi-year venture.

I am not sure if there is an industry standard analogy, so here are my attempts.

I started with the idea of the battle of good against bad. But this didn’t work as we are all on the same side. With so much intricacy, politics/agendas, networking, reorganisations and other variables involved the good/bad analogue is just too crude.

So how about steering the super-tanker off the rocks and into safe waters? If only it was so simple, single process, single issue, job done. Afraid we are much too complex with a number of different businesses and operating divisions.

How about the expert coach leading the team to triumph at the Olympics? We are all about delivering sustainable results not one off successes.

Possibly the expert surgeon who precisely operates on the sick patient? Feels a bit nearer, but still random in terms of who comes through the door.

Then it struck me, what I needed was a happy ending. So the analogy is each LSS deployment is a story, the length can run from a short article to a massive novel. I am merely in the middle of a difficult chapter.

For me a happy ending, the gods of motorway traffic smiled and I got home in only three and a half hours. Just in time to read both children their bedtime stories.