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One Assumption. $14 Million. Gone!

Posted on by Edy Dava
A $14M mistake shows how team communication breakdown silently kills performance.

Your team isn’t ignoring you. They’re completing your sentences for you.

And the version they fill in? It’s built on assumption – not intention.

That gap is where performance breaks down.

It was a $14 million honest mistake.

In 2001, UPS announced they were entering NASCAR with a $14 million sponsorship. Every team in the sport sent proposals. Championship-caliber teams. Polished pitches. Big promises.

A dear friend of mine was the CMO at UPS during this time and shared with me that there was one team that was the frontrunner. They had the perfect driver and sent in a phenomenal proposal.

He said they couldn’t “move forward with them once word got out about how their proposal arrived at headquarters!”

I asked him what he meant?

“Mike, they sent the proposal in a FedEx box!”

Yes, the team sent a $14 million proposal to UPS via FedEx.

It’s hard to recover from that and this team paid the price – a big one!

There was no sabotage. More than likely, it was just a chain of unintentional communication – “Get it out today” cascaded down the organization without any context. The mailroom did exactly what they always do.

$14 million. Gone.

That’s not a strategy failure. That’s an intentionality gap.

 This is the third pillar of my E.P.I.C. Framework.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been walking through the four pillars that help leaders and teams close the performance gap – the gap between where you are and where your potential says you should be.

Here’s where we are:

  • E – Excellence: What does exceptional execution actually look, sound, and feel like on your team?
  • P – Presence: Are you in the now – or already in and distracted by the next?
  • I – Intentionality: Are your daily actions, words, and decisions deliberately aligned with your goals?
  • (Next week: C – Curiosity, and we close the loop.)

Intentionality is the pillar that most directly exposes the gap between what you intend to happen and what actually happens.

Here’s why it’s harder than it sounds.

You’re fighting 60,000 thoughts a day.

Research from the National Science Foundation shows the average person has roughly 60,000 thoughts per day. About 80% of them are negative. And nearly 90% are repeated from the day before.

That’s a lot of mental static to lead through and to lead past.

If you’re not being intentional about what runs the show up here first, your team will feel it in how you communicate, how you show up under pressure, and in the wake you leave after every interaction.

I call it the Experience Wake.

Think of a boat cutting through water – fast, purposeful, powerful. But behind it? Ripples. Those ripples affect every vessel in the water, whether you’re watching or not.

As leaders, we leave Experience Wakes everywhere. Every meeting. Every delegation. Every hallway conversation.

The question isn’t whether you leave a wake. It’s whether you’re leaving it on purpose.

 Intentionality isn’t about big decisions.

It’s the one-degree adjustments most leaders overlook:

  • The why you share before you delegate
  • The specific language you choose in a difficult conversation
  • The energy you walk in with on a Monday morning

These micro-moments compound fast and in both directions.

→ ACTION STEP 1 – Individual Diagnostic

Start here, today:

Think about your last five major asks or delegations to your team.

Ask yourself honestly: Did I give them the what or the what AND the why?

Rate yourself 1–10 on this statement: “My team understands the intention behind my direction, not just the direction itself.”

That number is your intentionality baseline. Own it.

→ ACTION STEP 2 – Reality Check

This week:

Pull up one active project or initiative and audit your communication around it. Ask:

  • Did I communicate the context behind the goal?
  • Did I communicate the standard I expect at each step?
  • Did I communicate what good looks like – or did I assume they knew?

Where you find a gap? That’s where execution is breaking down. That’s your intentionality gap.

→ ACTION STEP 3 – Team Exercise

Bring this to your team this week – no priming, no group discussion first:

Ask every person to answer this question independently:

“What is the single most important thing our team is trying to accomplish this quarter and why does it matter?”

Then compare answers.

If they’re aligned? You’re leading with intentionality. If they’re scattered? You’ve just found your performance gap in real time.

That’s the E.P.I.C. Framework doing exactly what it was designed to do – surfacing Performance Assumptions before they become execution failures.

When’s the last time you made your intentions explicit – not assumed they were understood?

Drop your thoughts below because I read them all!

Be E.P.I.C. 🏁

Mike Mooney

Helping leaders and teams close the performance gap.