Our Teutoburg Forest

90-second read

They say that weeks, even months, after the catastrophic defeat at Teutoburg, the Emperor Augustus Caesar would wake up in cold sweat at night screaming:

“Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!”

In 9 AD, three Roman legions, led by Governor Varus, marched into the Teutoburg Forest. Varus believed he was heading out to settle a minor rebellion, and trusted the one man he shouldn’t have. His officers tried to warn him, but Varus refused to listen. So they walked into a deadly ambush set by Germanic tribes, and the entire army was annihilated.

Years later, sitting through an IT-system change at work, I remember thinking, ….’yep, this is our Teutoburg Forest’.

I was part of a project team, tasked with migrating the business to a new IT system. It was the right decision to move on from the old system. I mean, it was a bit tired and outdated, and we needed to move to a cloud-based CRM platform.

The person chosen to head up the team was not an IT or Ops guy. He was from Finance, self-assured, although I could never understand what the source of his confidence was.

We sensed very early on that the new system was not what it had been sold to us as. We raised our concerns, but the boss wouldn’t listen. It was his baby, and he needed it to succeed. He trusted the vendor, so we marched into it with him.

It was one of those situations where the person with the authority to stop the disaster, is the one most invested in it.

The outcomes were different, but the feeling was identical.