Identity: Season One

Jordan doesn’t announce it when the realization settles in. There’s no moment where they sit back and say, That’s it. That’s the problem. It happens more quietly than that. Late Tuesday afternoon. Same notebook. Same chair. Different feeling. Jordan is flipping through pages they’ve already filled. Arrows crossing. Names repeating. Systems showing up in places they don’t belong. Employees drifting into partner access. Partners touching customer systems. Automations bypassing controls meant for people. It isn’t chaos. It’s pattern.

Jordan closes the notebook halfway, resting a hand on the page. The issue isn’t that access exists. It’s that no one can see it all at once.

The next morning, Jordan pulls together a smaller meeting. Not the full steering committee. Not yet. Security. IT. HR. Mark joins first, coffee already half gone. Evan follows, laptop open before he sits down. Priya arrives last, apologizing for being a minute late and already skimming the agenda. Jordan keeps it simple.

“I want to talk about what we’re actually dealing with,” they say. “Not tools. Not fixes. Just the problem.”

Mark nods. “Good.”

Jordan turns to the whiteboard and writes a single word.

Visibility

They step back.For a moment, no one says anything. Evan breaks the silence. “You mean reporting?”

Jordan shakes their head. “Not dashboards. Not summaries.”

They draw a rough outline of the environment. Not neat. Just recognizable. “Right now,” Jordan continues, “we don’t have a shared way to see who has access, how they got it, and what it means across the business. We see pieces. You each see different ones.”

Priya leans forward. “That’s true.”

Mark watches carefully. “So what are you calling that?”

Jordan hesitates. This is the part that matters.They choose the words slowly. “An identity visibility gap.” The phrase lands and just… sits there. Evan doesn’t argue. He frowns slightly, eyes on the board.

“That implies we’re operating blind,” he says.

Jordan nods. “In places. Yes.”

By the afternoon, the phrase starts traveling. Jordan hears it echoed back in conversations they’re not leading. Mark uses it in a hallway discussion with Compliance. Priya mentions it in an HR sync. Evan references it during a technical review. Each time, the reaction is slightly different. Some people latch onto it immediately. Others push back, uncomfortable with what it suggests. A few go quiet. Jordan notices who reacts how. Names don’t just describe problems. They assign responsibility.

Thursday’s cross-functional meeting is larger. Security. IT. HR. Sales. Finance. Lena from Sales sits across the table, arms folded. Karen from Finance flips through the printed agenda. Jordan walks them through the same story. No drama. No exaggeration. How access is granted today. How it persists. How it crosses boundaries no one owns outright. Then Jordan uses the phrase.” An identity visibility gap.”

The room responds immediately. Karen looks up. “That sounds expensive.”

Mark exhales. “It sounds accurate.”

Lena leans back. “It also sounds like something that could slow deals down.”

Jordan lets the reactions play out.This is the tradeoff moment.Naming the problem has shifted the conversation. It’s no longer abstract. It’s directional.Jordan speaks again, calmly. “We can debate solutions later. But if we don’t agree on the problem, everything else is noise.”

No one disagrees out loud, but that doesn’t mean they agree.

That night, Jordan sits alone again, notebook open but untouched. They replay the day in their head. The looks. The pauses. The careful phrasing people used once the problem had a name. They hadn’t realized how much weight naming carried. Before, identity was a collection of frustrations. Now it’s a condition with implications. Jordan knows what comes next.Once a problem has a name, people expect:

Jordan closes the notebook, the word Visibility still visible on the whiteboard in their mind. They’re no longer just observing the system.They’re shaping the conversation around it. And that means the real resistance hasn’t even started yet.

Naming the problem feels simple. It isn’t. Most identity programs struggle not because the work is too hard, but because no one ever slowed down long enough to agree on what they were actually trying to solve. Episode 3 is about stopping that drift.

When you name an identity problem, vagueness is your enemy.

“Governance issues.”

“Too much access.”

“Lack of controls.”

Those phrases feel safe, but they don’t lead anywhere. They’re broad enough that everyone can agree with them—and vague enough that no one has to change. A useful problem statement should make people pause. Not because it assigns blame, but because it describes a condition they recognize and can’t ignore. If you can’t explain the problem in one or two clear sentences, you don’t understand it well enough yet.

This part is uncomfortable, but necessary. Once you’ve named the problem, resist the urge to keep redefining it to make people more comfortable. Clarity creates friction. That’s normal. If the problem keeps shifting depending on who’s in the room, you’ll never move forward. You’ll spend all your time debating interpretation instead of making decisions. Agree on the problem first. Then protect that agreement.

This is where identity stops being theoretical. Once the problem is named, start asking questions that connect it directly to the business:

If you can’t clearly articulate the value of solving the problem, you’re not ready to design solutions yet.Technology won’t fix a problem the business doesn’t understand.

As soon as a problem has a name, people will try to translate it into their own language.

Security will talk about risk. IT will talk about complexity. Finance will talk about cost. Sales will talk about friction. None of them are wrong. Those reframes tell you where value will need to be proven—and where resistance will show up later. Listen closely. You’re being given a preview of future debates.

Naming the problem isn’t about being clever.It’s about creating a shared understanding of what you’re solving and why it matters. If you can’t name the problem clearly, you can’t measure progress. If you can’t tie it to value, you can’t justify investment. And if you skip this step, everything that follows will feel harder than it needs to be. Next episode, Jordan starts assembling the group that will decide what happens next. That’s when alignment gets tested—and politics becomes unavoidable.