So, about this Zac Houston thing. It rings a bell, brings back some memories from a place I used to work at a few years back. Wasn’t really a specific thing like a tool, more like a… well, a guy, Zac Houston himself, and the whirlwind he brought.
He rolled in as some kind of consultant, all smooth talk and fancy slides. The bosses were eating it up. The big idea? Streamline everything. That was the promise. We were gonna be faster, leaner, meaner. Zac had this whole system, this ‘Houston Method’ or whatever he called it. Sounded great on paper, like most things consultants sell.
Then came the actual doing part. First off, meetings. So many meetings. We spent days just listening to Zac explain his grand vision. It involved ditching a bunch of tools we were actually comfortable with, stuff we knew worked, even if it wasn’t perfect. He wanted us on this new platform, something flashy but nobody really knew how to use properly.
I remember trying to get my head around it. My routine was simple before: get the task, figure out the steps, code it, test it, done. Now? It was like:
- Log into the new system (if it wasn’t down).
- Fill out three different forms Zac designed.
- Attend a ‘synergy’ meeting to discuss the forms.
- Try to figure out where the actual work fit into Zac’s complicated flowcharts.
- Get stuck because the new tool lacked a basic feature the old one had.
- Spend half a day trying to find a workaround, usually involving talking to three other confused people.
It was rough. We were supposed to be more efficient, but everything took twice as long. Simple bug fixes turned into week-long sagas. I spent more time navigating the ‘process’ than actually solving problems. You’d ask Zac a direct question about a practical issue, and you’d get this vague, philosophical answer about ‘mindset shifts’ or ‘paradigm alignment’. Honestly, it felt like he didn’t really know how the nuts and bolts of our actual work… worked.
The Fallout
Team morale tanked. We were all frustrated. Good people started looking elsewhere because they just wanted to get stuff done, not play process bingo all day. The managers who initially loved Zac started looking stressed. Projects weren’t getting delivered faster; they were getting bottlenecked by this new ‘streamlined’ system.
I stuck it out for a bit longer, trying to make it work, trying to adapt. You know, you try to be a team player. But eventually, it was clear this whole Zac Houston experiment was a bust. It wasn’t making anything better, just adding layers of bureaucracy and fancy jargon.
Looking back, it was a classic case of someone selling a silver bullet without understanding the beast they were trying to shoot. We didn’t need a revolution; we needed some practical improvements to what we already had. That whole period taught me a lot about looking past the shiny presentations and focusing on what actually works on the ground, day-to-day. Zac Houston? Yeah, I remember him. Mostly for the headaches.
