The 750,000$ question
I do not understand why people don’t ask more questions
#21 2026/05/31
The Intentional Manager — strategy, leadership and execution for the professional who wants to lead with intention, not just effort.
Really.
It’s like being handed a superpower and choosing to leave it in the drawer: you can do it, but it makes life unnecessarily hard.
Below is how one question recovered some 750,000$ in revenue.
The context
A while back we acquired a startup and inherited its processes, including the one governing how our machines are installed in hospitals.
The process hinged on a document called the IT walkthrough: we sent it to the hospitals’ IT department and then waited for their answer.
On average, it took three months to get it.
The whole thing didn’t make any sense.
I was told to let this go. I nodded, smiled - then set up a meeting with the engineer responsible for the installation.
The meeting
The meeting lasted 45min. Here’s how it went.
Me: Is there anything we can do to improve the installation process and bring it down from the current three months?
Engineer: Yes, of course.
“Yes, of course.”
What the hell. We had been running this dumb process for months and the guy responsible for executing it had a clear view of how to fix it.
Me: I see two options: either we start from zero and redesign the process or we try to improve what exists. Let’s start with the second, because improving something is usually easier than starting from scratch. Is everything we ask in the current IT walkthrough actually needed?
Engineer: No.
AH.
Me: Tell me more.
Engineer: It depends on where the machine is installed. If it goes in the control room, I just need to know whether there is an empty Ethernet port nearby. That is it. Everything else in the template is irrelevant.
Me: And the procedure room?
Engineer: A bit more complex, yet still simple. I need someone with minimal technical knowledge to go to the cathlab, take a few pictures and answer a few questions. They can FaceTime me while they are there and I will guide them. I do not need anything from the hospital’s IT department.
For context: we install 85% of the machines in the control room, as we have seen it work best for the customer.
It means that, in 85% of the cases, we only needed one piece of information that could fit in a text message.
And, in the other 15% of the cases, we could have solved it with a 30min visit by someone already on our payroll.
Instead, we chose to send an overloaded template to the hospitals’ IT departments, waiting and begging them to fill it.
Three.
Months.
Me: Why was the process designed this way in the first place?
Engineer: At the start I was the only engineer at the startup doing installations. Sales reps were sending me pictures of cathlabs on WhatsApp at all hours, asking whether they were doing the right thing. I needed a way to structure the information flow and protect myself from the noise. The template was that protection.
Me: That made sense then. Yet now we have technical consultants who visit the cathlab in person. The original problem that justified the template no longer exists.
Engineer: Correct. Rewriting it makes total sense.
The conversation ended. He produced a revised, minimalistic walkthrough split into two versions (control room vs procedure room) and ownership shifted from the sales reps, who had been pushing back on it anyway, to the technical consultants, who were already in the cathlab.
The new process now takes about seven days.
The math
3 months of recovered installation time
X devices used per month
Y$ of average selling price
Z accounts to be activated this year.
Multiply all those and you get 756,000$.
(real numbers hidden as sensitive information)
Conclusion
The question “Is there anything we can do to improve this?” is almost always sitting there, alone, waiting for someone to ask it.
Asking it is the easy part. Owning what comes next is the price.
So pay it. If something doesn’t make sense, make it your problem. Even when you are told to let it go.
Thanks for reading,
Luca
If someone in your network would find this useful, forward it their way - it costs you little and might just make their Monday morning slightly less painful.
