So, people sometimes ask about that Ben Goodin phase. Yeah, I remember that time pretty clearly. It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, let me tell you.
We were in the middle of this massive project, already juggling a bunch of moving parts. Things were shaky, deadlines were tight, the usual stuff. Then management decided we needed a fresh perspective, someone to shake things up. In walks Ben Goodin, or at least, his ideas did. He wasn’t there physically all the time, more like this presence, this methodology they bought into.
The whole pitch was about efficiency, synergy, all those fancy words. We were told to drop some of our old tools, the ones we actually knew how to use, and adopt this new ‘Goodin Framework’. Supposedly it would streamline everything. We spent weeks in training sessions, trying to wrap our heads around it. Lots of diagrams, lots of talks about changing our mindset.
First few weeks felt like wading through mud. Simple tasks suddenly took twice as long. We’d try to follow the new steps, hit a wall, ask for clarification, and get pointed back to some dense manual. Communication broke down because half the team was trying the new way, the other half was secretly sticking to the old way just to get stuff done. It was chaotic.
I remember pulling late nights, trying to make this Ben Goodin system work for a report that used to take me an hour. Now it was a whole day affair, clicking through menus that didn’t make sense. It felt like we were beta testing something half-baked. My boss kept saying, “Trust the process,” but the process felt broken.
Then the pressure really ramped up. Clients weren’t happy, things were slipping. Instead of admitting the new system might be the problem, the blame game started. Meetings got real tense. It wasn’t about fixing the problem anymore, it was about finding who messed up implementing the ‘brilliant’ Ben Goodin way.
Honestly, it burned me out. Seeing good work get tangled up in bureaucracy and buzzwords. I started looking around, quietly. Didn’t feel like the place for me anymore, you know? It wasn’t just the project, it was the whole atmosphere that changed. Felt like common sense went out the window.
I eventually moved on to a different company. Way less drama, much more focus on just doing the work. Funny thing, I heard from an old colleague a few months later that they quietly shelved the whole Ben Goodin framework after a major client complained. Went back to something closer to what they had before.
So yeah, that was my experience with the whole Ben Goodin thing. A lot of fuss, a lot of wasted time, and it pushed me to find something better. Sometimes you gotta go through stuff like that to figure out what you really want, I guess. Just wish it hadn’t been so painful at the time.
