CHAPTER 1

The Discovery

Background, Key Players, and Situations

Thursday, January 23, 2020

It’s 6 a.m. on another cold and foggy morning in Spring Green, a small Midwestern town in Wisconsin. I stretch my right arm out across the satin beige sheets to grab my phone and snooze the alarm. I decide to take a sneak peek at the texts sitting on my home screen, after hearing multiple dings. Could it be Richie this early, I think.

Sure enough, it is Richard Parker, my boss and our CIO. I quickly open the messages, thinking it’s unusual for Richie to start the day so early in the morning. Half awake, I struggle to read with half-open and blurry eyes. I bring the phone close to my face as I read the text messages.

Figure 1.1 Text—Richie and Neil

I look at my inbox with an influx of e-mails coming in on my phone. I notice 50 more unread e-mails since I had last checked around 7:15 p.m. I recall having wrapped up earlier than usual in the office, and I didn’t check my e-mails as our little one Tina was down with the fever.

While it is common to see a dozen of those e-mails each morning in my role as Director of Digital Transformation at Walkers Mart Corp, where I work closely with various global teams in India, Philippines, Poland, and the United States, looking at the sheer number gives me goosebumps.

Damn, I sigh and quickly slip on my glasses. I start reading them, and many of them are short two liners on our international supply chain issues being driven by coronavirus-related challenges. I am copied in along with five to six other leaders.

Lately, I have been more attentive and sensitive to e-mails where Richie is copied in, and as I scroll down, I see he is indeed copied in most of these. Something critical was going on.

Although the Walkers Mart conglomerate is an established and diversified global retail group, it is no secret that our retail chain, which was once one of the leading corporates with high market capitalization, is struggling like never before. Our finance division is considering options like restructuring our debt or cutting back on costs to meet our long-term financial obligations. It seems like we are on the brink of potential bankruptcy if things do not improve soon, especially with significant fluctuations in the market value of the firm. The customers are scaling back on new orders and international suppliers are lately changing their terms of delivery due to red tape in our supply chain processes. This is coming much sooner and much faster.

In the last few years, we have had a monumental ambition for enterprise-wide digital transformations focusing on e-commerce, enhancing online shopping experiences with seamless home deliveries of our products, and embracing newer ways of working and leveraging agile. But we haven’t been so lucky when it comes to delivering our ambition.

Figure 1.2 E-mail—upgrade

As I continue to scroll through my e-mails, I find the e-mail from Richie. It was sent just minutes after I went offline, when Tina wasn’t feeling too good.

I mutter to myself “the writing is on the wall.” And these stores too will shut down for good. Now we have shut our doors at 200 locations out of 406!

As I mentally add up numbers while recalling the 70 stores that were closed earlier in the summer, I start to wonder which stores had made it to that list.

I have been with Walkers for the past 15 years, who used to be among the top five largest retail groups in the country. I had been doing reasonably well in my previous position as the Senior Manager of Corporate Information Technology before I got promoted to a new role as Director of Digital Transformation with enterprise-wide agile adoption responsibilities. To think of it, that was almost three years ago now that I reflect back on the journey. Essentially, I was asked to spearhead the largest transformation in the company’s history, to re-invent the customers’ digital experience.

However, last summer, soon after the initial wave of store closures, for the first time in 65 years of monumental history, the company has initiated massive layoffs across the board, especially in the Merchandizing and Store operations group.

The Digital group was not in the initial wave of those impacted by the last layoffs, although deep down I fear that it is only a matter of time when we could inevitably become one of the casualties. Here comes the second wave of store closures.

I sigh, not looking forward to what today had in store for me after starting my morning with that sort of news to digest.

I pull myself out of bed and start brushing my teeth. I begin to think about how I could have done things differently. I was one of the architects and champions of the enterprise-wide digital transformation leveraging agile ways of working. In fact, I had named it FA@ST which stood for the “Framework for Agile@Scale Techniques.”

Although Walkers Mart has been transitioning to digital and online sales, it still has over 80 percent of its revenues coming from brick-and-mortar stores.

I rinse my mouth, frantically weighing different scenarios in my head. I look at my reflection in the mirror, reminding myself of the greater goal ahead.

After wrapping up reading and responding to other critical and time sensitive e-mails, many of them from Gus, my old boss and our Head IT Operations and Infrastructure, I take a brief shower thinking about what Richie has in mind and urgently wants to talk about. The steam building up in the shower eases my mind and brings me back to a state of calmness.

I make it downstairs to the kitchen in our four-bedroom home on Green street and join my wife Cindy and our two daughters Ami and Tina over the breakfast bar. I pretend as if it was a usual workday like any other and put a brave smile on my face, trying my best to look cheerful.

“Good morning dad.”

I see Tina is giggling and cheerful about something. I kiss her cheek, giving her all my attention.

“Dad I have my story telling contest today. I am going to tell a curious monkey story,” she mentions while having her favorite Frosties cereal.

I touch Tina’s forehead and try to make eye contact with Cindy.

“She looks totally fine, right?” I worry.

Figure 1.3 Neil’s introduction

I sigh thinking about how today will be another long day after checking my e-mails.

“Hey Cindy, it seems like there’s going to be some action today at work.”

I explain, frantically scrolling through my work phone as the influx of e-mail notifications pop up.

“I think I’ll stay at the office late today, is that ok?” I apologetically look at her.

Cindy looks at me, with a surprising look that reminds me of her follow-up doctor’s appointment today that I completely forgot about.

She has been avoiding going to the doctors for a year after seeing abnormal changes to her body with unusual symptoms, but last week she finally went after much persuasion from our family and friends.

I look at my calendar on my phone for a reminder.

Ah, it seems like Becky, my assistant, did not update my calendar. I sigh, mentally shifting my schedule around. I will have to come back home early.

I look at our two beautiful daughters having Frosties for breakfast.

I laugh out loud when Tina cheers me, “Dad you know why I like Frosties, because they have our last name!”

“Bye Tina and Ami, I love you girls.” I blow them kisses before leaving.

As I approach the parking lot, I can see the Pearl Green Lexus, which is Richie’s car. Richie is early today and has even skipped his golf hours. Something must be up.

As soon as I enter the building straight to the sixth floor, I take a left instead of heading to my floor, to meet and greet Richie. I got the sixth-floor office over a year back. We have a sixth-floor mentality. Climbing the corporate ladder means climbing the floors. The promotions literally mean getting an office on one of the higher floors.

“Hello Tammy,” I meet his assistant.

She is filing a pile of paperwork from last week’s divestiture deal. Legal experts from Hana’s team are due to meet with our lawyers to discuss the future terms of our contractual agreements.

“Is Richie in?” I peep at her calendar.

“Yeah Neil. Good morning to you too.” She says with an attitude.

“Sorry, that was rude of me, good morning.” I apologize with speed.

She smiles, accepting my apology.

“He is inside, feel free to walk in. He canceled his usual meeting with the consulting folks.” She mentions, taking a sip of her green smoothie.

The consulting folks are the PMAG team or more formally the Prized Management Advisory Group, who are our consultants for a wide range of programs and projects in the company. They have been supporting my teams as well in Digital by staffing project managers, developers, scrum masters, and agile coaches.

“Hey, good morning Richie.”

I walk into his office with confidence, trying to mask my curiosity about what is going on.

“Hey.” Richie replies rather tersely while looking at his monitor.

He cuts straight to the chase, as if he knows what I am about to ask.

“So, you saw my message, we are very close to deciding on the dates for those 130 stores, the board is aligned on that.”

I watch him closely as he leans back in his chair and puts his hands together. The million dollars’ worth of a watch on his wrist glistens as he points at me.

“You know the drill. We don’t want to spend any more money on those stores and at the same time, you know we are letting people go at our Chicago office.” He continues.

I stand still, uneasy about this.

“I also want to share by EoD, how much we will save by not upgrading those stores and cutting down our work force.”

“Yeah, I got that.” I reply, trying to pretend as if things were normal.

“So, is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

The room got tense.

“Yeah.” Richie pauses for a few seconds, taking a deep breath.

He looks directly at me.

“So, Neil how is FA@ST going? I know we have had our troubles and tussles, and challenges but I think that is our last bet, which is failing. We are not far from a dismal failure and being a laughingstock pretty soon.”

A light laugh escapes his lips.

“Do we know what is going wrong? Our apps take longer to hit market and our guys keep fixing broken stuff rather than building new ones. There are escalations on a daily basis due to outages, teams seem to falter in delivering upgrades, releases get pushed by weeks if not months, we have too much glitches and production defects.”

“I continue to hear poor feedbacks about FA@ST.”

At this point, I don’t know if I am supposed to feel angry or disappointed. He leans back in his leather chair, bringing his hands together.

“FA@ST is part of the problem, I am told, so we need to fix it. And need to fix it now, please! We are running out of options!” He exclaims, catching me off guard.

“Let’s not even talk about our extreme budget constraints given the latest business outlook, which by now we all very well understand. Don’t we?” He further adds.

“As you will see in the e-mails from this morning, the virus-related supply chain disruption could be bigger than we think.” He sighs.

“And for your information, Sid Bose is coming in today.”

He swings his tablet device toward me to read the e-mail.

Sid is a Transformation Coach engaged in the corporate department last quarter by Charlie, our CEO. Charlie and Sid have a mutual connection, who recommended him to Charlie over dinner at The Ritz in London with our key international stakeholders from the European markets.

I bring my attention back to Richie speaking.

“I listened to you when you asked for more time to turnaround FA@ST all by yourself, now it’s critical we get him actively involved on the ground to get some independent expertise!”

Figure 1.4 E-mail—FA@ST

This guy, Sid is known in the industry for his deep expertise to “transform transformations” especially those which are struggling pretty much like ours.

Richie bends his head to look at the ding on his phone, hinting that this conversation is over.

“We will meet him and coordinate it,” I reply and start to make my way out of his office.

There was no other civilized way Richie could have said this. I guess I will be forced to hand over my own job to someone like him if I can’t figure out a way to collaboratively work with him. I feel insecure with the thought.

In the last three years, Walkers has been trying in some ad hoc ways to respond to changing customer preferences by piggybacking on our digital programs, which some colleagues used to refer to as lean–agile transformation.

We have been using digital and agile interchangeably in the company. I have both the responsibilities, and in tough meetings, I frequently use the chicken and egg analogy, asking our leaders whether they could be digital without being agile, or the way around. I know I use some of the semantics more often than I should to avoid the elephant in the room. But somehow, it seems like we have confused ourselves way too much in the process.

In the middle of my thoughts, I see Daisy walking toward me. She always means business.

“We are behind our e-commerce revenue target which makes my work more challenging in the current ambiguous business environment.”

She sighs, muttering her regrets.

“Ship-to-store features are getting delayed further and further. What do you know about it? And do you really care?” She folds her arms, looking at me.

“I absolutely do Daisy,” I say with some level of embarrassment.

Daisy is in a full venting mode and rightly so, I reassure her.

“Are they still waiting for someone’s blessing?” Her tone changes.

“I know, I know all that.” I say in a hurry to calm her down.

She speaks over me as she waves her hands about in the air.

“Gus actually says he doesn’t care what customers say and his responsibility is narrowly limited just to ensure the stability of his IT systems.”

“GRC folks wanted another two full weeks of compliance reviews, and as expected, Hana concurs with her team. I realize as per our process that we need an exceptional approval from our CIO to get the release done.”

“I had e-mailed Richie precisely as you asked me last week. But it appears that he didn’t read his e-mails. So, you tell me, what am I supposed to do?” She leans back against the wall in the hallway.

“I know I sound upset, but I feel like our processes and release timelines are getting crazier day by day.”

Daisy clearly feels that her e-commerce priorities are suffering due to our rigid processes.

I step forward, trying to reassure her again.

“I will look into it shortly.”

She walks away without responding to my repeated assurances.

Daisy has been quite unhappy lately with project delays and the rising budgets of my teams. She is a straight talker and an assertive leader known for getting things done, even if it means having difficult and uncomfortable conversations.

Her tone comes from her clout and the significant influence she has at Walkers, much more than me by status and title. She is the senior VP and heads the entire e-commerce business portfolio, with Digital as one of her priorities, although I know it’s a major headache.

Her digital projects, especially ones for omni channels and payment gateways projects, are frequently delayed in releasing newer upgrades, apps, and features. She is also my boss on the business side of the organization, so I am not about to let her down.

I quickly get distracted, as my phone begins to ring. It’s my wife Cindy.

“Hey hun, the doctor’s office just called. They want you to accompany me as they want to share the results.”

“That’s unusual but yeah sure. I will be happy to. I’ll text our babysitter to keep an eye on the kids until we are back home.” I mention, making a plan.

“One more thing, I wanted to let you know during my last visit, the doctor noticed some abnormalities from the ultrasound, so she took a sample for a biopsy too.” She mentions.

“Is everything ok honey? What else did she say?” I come back to reality.

A part of my heart sinks, thinking the worst. I play with my fingers, trying to keep calm for my wife, but the possibility of it being anything cancerous dampens my hope. I’m overthinking it’s probably not a big deal.

“You know I had my last annual checkup, so I thought they were being extra cautious. I did not want to bother you for nothing. You already have too much on your plate with all that’s going on at work.”

I respond to Cindy in a feeble voice.

“I, I don’t even know what to say honey.”

I am still processing the information and she lets the news sink in for the next few seconds. But soon after, she tries to rush the conversation and bring it to an end.

“I gotta go Neil, I love you!”

“Love you too.” I manage to say, without releasing the full extent of my emotions. We exchange those words as we usually do but with a much deeper meaning this time.

I hang up and find myself speechless. I am in shock. My wife, the pillar of our family is being tested for cancer. Cindy is barely 40 years old. How the hell is this happening?

Walkers has kept me so preoccupied lately that I almost forgot about Cindy’s lump that she mentioned a few days ago. It didn’t look like a tumor, but I am no doctor.

I hurriedly create a reminder on my phone as we have the 4:15 p.m. appointment to discuss the results of Cindy’s biopsy report.

As I reach my office, I notice someone already inside. A middle-aged stranger in a blue surfer t-shirt, a leather jacket, black sneakers, and jeans is in my office. His dress code makes him stand out as we are all invariably more formally dressed.

After multiple approvals, I had allowed smart casual dress codes in a few digital teams only on the last Fridays of the month. But the culture was still very much formal and didn’t accept anything otherwise.

As soon as I enter my office, this man gets up and apologizes for not requesting to meet me formally via e-mail.

“I’m sorry to intrude, I just took some liberty to make myself comfortable. It’s an aggressive timeline you know!” He blurts out loud, sensing that I was clueless about who he was.

“Sid Bose, pleasure to finally meet you, Neil.”

He moves forward with his right hand out to shake mine. I don’t show much thought or emotion as I am still recovering from my call with Cindy.

“Same here,” I reply poignantly.

“How are you this morning?”

The guy looks hyperactive and wants to strike the conversation right away. He wants to sound friendly, but I am not interested. I was not expecting to see him in my office in this way and definitely not so soon.

So, I nod lightly, not willing to say much.

“As you already know by now, I’m Neil the Director of Digital and Agile,” I make it clear, my position pointing at my silver nameplate on my desk.

“I noticed some of the posters and displays of FA@ST on my way to your office. I do have quite a high-level background, but would you care to fill me in?” He tries to get too comfortable not hiding his curiosity.

“So why are you doing agile or lean or FA@ST, or whatever you want to call it?”

“Yes, I could.” I reply thinking what is his deal and what this guy really up to?

Deep down, I am thinking at the back of my mind, do I really have a choice when it comes to working with this guy? And is he, my replacement?

He scans my office with his eyes, eager to get to the bottom of it.

He reaches to the left side white board “Could we structure our session on the following points?”

And anything you want to add?

“This seems like a handful. I’m not sure I have all the time you are asking for.”

“Better make it Neil, you know what is at stake.” He almost intimidates me.

“Let me cancel my meetings for today so you can continue to interrogate me.” I say rudely in a frustrated voice.

I soon try to zip it up before it’s too late, discerning this guy has a mandate from none other than the CEO!

Why?

Purpose of the Transformation

“So, first item on the purpose is a great question. Unfortunately, the answer changes depending on whom you ask. I do have my own view too. Let us come back to this one toward the end as I want to share a boarder perspective with you not just mine.”

I move on to the next point to avoid too much conversation on this difficult topic.

What?

The Current Scaling Framework

I try my best to stand tall with confidence, explaining to him on the whiteboard.

“So, we started the FA@ST program, which stands for Framework for Agile@Scale Techniques, about three years ago with a five-year road map. Technically, we are somewhere in the middle of it, but you know, the leadership feels we are not getting the right outcomes. In fact, Richie and perhaps some other people could argue FA@ST is meant to make us faster, but it has actually made us slower though I don’t entirely agree.”

“We have trained and certified many people too across the company.” I try to defend my side of story.

“With budgets drying up we need to make some difficult choices and take hard decisions if we want to keep doing this transformation or if we want to put a lid on it forever.”

“What are your thoughts and any questions for me?” I ask almost fleetingly.

Sid smiles, letting a laugh escape his mouth.

“I have plenty of questions, all I do is I ask questions and we will jointly find the answers. What do you say buddy?”

“Actually, we are going to go together. Let’s go for some coffee, shall we?” Sid replies.

I pause to grab my cold iced quad latte and start to guzzle before continuing to the next item.

Who?

Key Stakeholders and Their Roles

After checking the door is closed, I list down main contacts on a notepad adding some color:

“What exactly does Tim do in PMO?” Sid asks with a smirk on his face.

“He is the boss of Project and Program Managers.”

Sid rolls his eyes, “Yes, but what does he do?”

“Bosses do lots of things in this company. They attend meetings, make comments, review deliverables, receive status review reports, send nasty e-mails, allocate work, approve or decline expense reports, conduct performance appraisals, and give lengthy speeches in town halls.”

“And they regularly ask you, ‘how is it going?’ … without really meaning it. But don’t quote me, or else you will get me fired.” I gently warn him.

“Absolutely, I appreciate you being transparent and please know that our personal conversations are strictly confidential. You have my word.” Sid assures me with a loud laugh.

“But to your question, I think Tim is the guy you could work with as well, especially on the PMO stuff.”

“Yes, I will be very interested to meet Tim, perhaps tomorrow. The role of PMO and project managers in a lean–agile transformation is always intriguing and could be equally challenging too.” Sid adds.

I need to introduce you to Gus and then Tim, who are two leaders who will dislike seeing a stranger walking and talking to their teams right in their territories.

“Program and project managers and some scrum masters report to Tim, while IT and some digital folks roll up to Gus … with resources loaned to Tim and myself.”

“And there is a layer between Business, Digital, and IT called Business Technology. You can say it is like information system (IS) some companies have a legacy from the last decade.

Our product departments are run by a VP who has a dotted or solid line reporting relationship with Daisy, who heads e-commerce. She has a mandate and aggressive targets for growing online business in each of the segments.”

I jot down the product departments on the notepad.

Figure 1.5 Product departments

I look at my phone it’s already 12:15 p.m. Where did my morning go? This jerk is taking the rest of it!

We take a lunch break and then meet again after an hour on the next topic.

How?

Approach to Assess the Challenges

“So, what is your framework? Do you have a deck?” I point a finger to his closed laptop.

I am expecting him to show me another colorful and decorative PowerPoint with a swanky assessment model along with some consulting talk.

“None. We don’t need a shiny new framework or a slew of abstract concepts.” He surprises me.

“Really … ? So, what’s the deal? What do you think needs to be changed in our current framework?” I speak in a puzzling tone.

He responds in a pensive tone. “Neil, as we know people don’t work alone. They work with other people, in groups and in contexts using a set of practices, norms, and interaction routines.

We need to understand the relationships between people, concepts, and their work context.”

“But how exactly could we do that?” I inquire immediately in a perplexed tone.

“We must go and see to find what is going on around us and ask the right questions.

We need to walk around the office and talk to those who do the actual work. We need to adopt active listening, develop situational awareness, and respectfully ask inquisitive questions to each other and to everyone. In our constant quest to find answers, we don’t ask enough questions and don’t listen as much. As human beings we generally tend to rush toward solutions without clearly defining the problem, its context, root causes, and sources.”

He pauses for a few seconds and then persists.

“We need to craft incisive and probing questions to build a deeper understanding of the situation. The questions need to be built to activate our reflection, analysis, and further research. They need to be designed much like the Socratic method to stimulate our critical thinking.”

“We must define questions which we are trying to answer?” I try my own incisive question.

He strongly nods. “Exactly. There you go!”

“And you think this will help us to transform Walkers?” I say with a sarcastic pitch to convey my reluctance with his approach.

He continues to rationalize “The questions help us to analyze the root causes of our problems. It aids us to explore solutions to our problems that are specific, contextual, and firmly embedded into the real work.

We must carefully learn lessons from our conversations, situations, and developments. This aids us to recognize the context of our problems by connecting with our current knowledge. For example, our knowledge of agile and lean principles could help us to objectively assess the effect of rigid processes, broken systems, undue influence of certain individuals, and excessive hierarchical powers.

And the most important of all how agile are we in serving the customers and how customers feel about their experience?

“We will define a set of hypotheses and launch a set of experiments to test those hypotheses.”

Sid further explains.

When?

Timelines to Transform-the-Transformation

“Instead of planning afresh for another reset of transformation for many more months, we will do it incrementally and iteratively.” Sid starts writing on the right side of the whiteboard.

“We could have four sprints with a lightweight cadence so we have a structure and timebox to establish feedback loops with executive team, and stay truly lean and agile to Transform-the-Transformation.”

The cadence of four sprints will be:

Each Sprint needs to have the following events.

Sprint Planning

This is on the first day of sprint to plan, prioritize and commit to the backlog. The backlog includes the sprint goal and a list of work items to be achieved within the sprint.

Stand-Up

Fifteen minutes to communicate progress to each other and identify blockers. Standing up the team helps keep meetings short! No preparation is required and this is not status reporting.

Sprint Review

This is on the last day of sprint to demonstrate the current state of the product and receive feedbacks from the customers or a diverse set of stakeholders who represent customers.

Sprint Retrospective

This is on the last day of the sprint to reflect on what went well, what didn’t go well, and prioritize improvement actions for the next sprint.

I ask with a stunned look at his proposed cadence and timeline, “I have never seen sprint cadence used to launch a bunch of experiments. And could we do this in 11 weeks?”

Sid tries to calm me down.

“This helps us to identify problems, prioritize, and actionize top improvements in PMO, IT, and digital within this timeframe and establishes a predictable rhythm. We can inspect and adapt our cadence a needed. If we get this right, we could absolutely see the effect of these improvements in the Walkers business performance.”

“Is it not too ambitious?” I confront him again.

“Do we have a choice?” Sid replies succinctly.

I reluctantly agree to set up a lightweight cadence for our TTT, starting with stand-up and retrospective.

Sid continues. “We need a few working sessions for the next few weeks to define the tactical plan of action. I need key vision–mission statements and information on funding processes, product roadmaps, team structures, organization charts, and roles and responsibilities to simultaneously define our rules of engagement.”

“And I propose we both jointly visualize all our activities, meetings, agendas, and sessions using a Kanban board. The Kanban method allows to visualize the flow of work and limit work in progress (WIP). The word Kanban has origins in Japanese and roughly translates as ‘visual card’. A simple three columns updated at least once every 48 hours, with To-do, In progress, and Done.

This helps to understand the workload and if it is regularly flowing to completion. Let us put a limit of six for work in progress for us, meaning items in ‘In Progress’ column is less than six at any point of time. We could jointly update the Kanban board on key priorities but could you help set it up?” He is polite but really assertive.

“Let us use the Kanban board during our stand-ups.” He affirms.

“Wow! That’s a lot of information, documents, and things to do. It seems like I need to halt all of my work and give you what you need.” I say with an overwhelmed voice.

“Can we get help from your assistant, Becky, to align our calendars with items of Kanban board and timely schedule meetings and block time for our conversations?” He asks.

I look at my watch. It’s almost time to start driving for Cindy’s appointment. “Let me see what I can do, but for now I have to leave for a personal appointment.”

I am already suspecting by now that he’s up to something wicked. He wants a Kanban board, runs sprints, and makes all our problems visual, out there in the open!

I feel like he is trying to publicly embarrass me and get me fired.

Cindy’s Appointment

I hurriedly start driving back as soon as he gets out of my car.

As I park my car on my driveway in front of our home, Cindy is almost ready and stepping out to meet me. Our babysitter has just arrived too.

“Hey girls, seems like we are going to have some fun tonight?” The sitter smiles at the kids.

We arrive at the medical practice 20 minutes before Cindy’s appointment.

The fear and the anxiety that we are both feeling is evident, and it’s hard to mask. I hold Cindy’s hand in mine, looking at the clock and struggling to keep it together.

I look at the practice, staring at the other patients in the waiting area, and after waiting for almost half an hour, a woman who looks like she is in her late 30s emerges from one of the rooms.

“Mr. and Mrs. Frost, hi my name is Dr. Anu. How are you today?” She smiles, opening up a calm and welcoming conversation to relax us both.

As we reach her office, Dr. Anu mentions that Cindy’s regular doctor had referred to her for discussing the report.

We both take a seat, wishing we could get past this and put it behind us.

“Mr. and Mrs. Frost, I carefully looked at the biopsy reports from the tests.”

I gulp, preparing to hear the news.

“After cautious consideration we concluded that Cindy has TNBC, what we call triple-negative breast cancer.”

She yields for us to assimilate the news, and Cindy is quiet. I hold her hand to comfort her, but in the process, I am feeling overwhelmed.

“Sorry so TNB?” I stutter.

“TNBC,” Dr. Anu gently corrects me patiently.

“And so, what does this TNBC mean again? What does it really mean?” I hear my own unsettled voice as I am speaking up.

“Is it treatable?” I blurt out.

“Yes, it is treatable.” Dr. Anu nods, placing her hands on her desk.

“But I am afraid, this type of cancer is considered to be an aggressive type of cancer, with a poorer prognosis than other types of breast cancer. I am sorry to share the bad news.” She adds.

At this point, I am flabbergasted with all the medical terms.

Dr. Anu suggests for Cindy to return in two days to decide and discuss her treatment plan and treatment options.

Our drive back is silent. I try extending my hand to touch her palm, but Cindy is in a state of denial and confusion. I see her vigorously searching websites on her phone about breast cancer survival rates.

I am also pondering on my own frightful day at work. We can’t lose my health insurance at this time; I think in my own deep thoughts. Losing my job could now mean almost losing our health insurance as well. How did we get here?

I feel my stomach turn. Cindy’s cancer diagnosis will be extremely terrifying for our family; an array of thoughts crosses my mind.

We get home just after 8:50 p.m. I am relieved to hear from the babysitter that both our girls are already asleep. I try to make some time to comfort Cindy as we have time to ourselves.

We barely eat our dinner with some leftovers of the Fork-Tender Pot Roast from last night. I could see tears in Cindy’s eyes. We hug and I try to soothe her while controlling my own tears, staying strong for her sake.

As I lie on my bed in sorrow after a grueling and devastating day, I say a prayer in my head.

My life has just changed in ways I had never expected, both professionally and personally in less than 24 hours.