CAPABILITY. CAPABILITY. CAPABILITY - 2 Days, 12 Department Heads and Heard the Word 1,400+ times.

CAPABILITY. CAPABILITY. CAPABILITY. We just spent 2 days with 12 Department Heads and the CEO, and heard the word 1,400+ times.

CAPABILITY. THE WORD THAT ENDED 12 MEETINGS.

Over 2 days, 12 Department Heads gathered to talk enterprise strategy.

And in true modern tradition, they summoned the ancient corporate chant:

“Capability.”

1,400+ times.

At some point, it stopped being English and became a lifestyle.

When CEO asked, What exactly is a capability???

...and the speaker replied:

It’s… you know… a capability.

At one point, I started hearing:

-Capabibbity

-Cappabilityfication

-Decapabitalize that function

I may have hallucinated that last one!!!

Actual things we heard:

1. “We need to enable capabilities that empower capability-driven capabilities.”

2.“This initiative is fully capability-aligned with our capability intent.”

3. “Let’s anchor this on our Capability Maturity 4.0 Model.”

(No one knows what 4.0 means. Not even the model.)

-HR Head whispered:

“Are they talking about people?”

-Sales Director asked:

“Are we selling something?”

-Strategy Lead muttered:

“Do we even have this ‘capability’… or are we just manifesting it?”

-CIO sighed:

“I’m 98% sure I approved a capability last week. I just don’t know what it does.”

By Day 2, every deck looked the same:

– Slide 1: Capability Roadmap

– Slide 2: Capability Stack

– Slide 3: Capability Enablement

– Slide 4: Confusion

– Slide 5: Capability Recap (because we forgot what it was)

Here’s the joke.

“Capability” is the only corporate word that can mean:

– A team

– A tool

– A wish

– A feeling

– A folder on SharePoint no one opens

If your enterprise runs on capabilities that can’t be mapped to a process, system, or result…

You’re not running a company.

You’re writing poetry.

Let’s switch to real Enterprise Anatomy:

15 departments, 6 perspectives, 1000 connected nodes and 

One inter-connected anatomy

From strategy all the way to what actually runs on a Tuesday afternoon.

Next time someone says “capability”...

Just lean in and ask,

“Oh, is that upstream, downstream, or just stream-of-consciousness?”

If your enterprise runs on “capabilities” that can’t be traced to a process, a system, or an outcome...

You’re not running a company.

You’re writing abstract poetry at scale.

So dear CEOs—next time someone presents a Capability Roadmap...

Ask them:

“Is this a business model or a word cloud?”

Let’s raise the bar.

Less “capability.”

More clarity, structure, and outcomes that don’t need translation.