Rewiring the System: How One Missed Payment Sparked a $100M Wake-Up Call (Case Study)

Katie Shearn
May 1
3 min read

One missed payment. That’s all it would’ve taken to trigger over $100 million in losses. But the real issue wasn’t the payment—it was the system behind it. In a high-stakes, fast-paced energy market like PJM, success hinges not just on speed, but on alignment. This is the story of how systems thinking revealed hidden risks, restored flow, and helped a team transform from reactive to resilient.

From Risk to Resilience: How Systems Thinking Prevented $100M in Losses

In a world increasingly driven by speed and complexity, reacting to problems isn’t enough. We need to understand how moving parts connect—and how one small delay can trigger a cascade of consequences.

That’s exactly the lesson we learned through a financial operations challenge within the PJM Interconnection grid—and how systems thinking turned a potential crisis into a case of organizational resilience.

The Challenge: A Tiny Delay with Massive Risk

PJM, a regional electricity transmission organization managing both energy and financial flows, requires weekly payments from participants. This isn’t a typical monthly financial cycle—missing just one payment can mean immediate exclusion from the market. For one company new to this model, the stakes were high: a single delay risked over $100 million in losses, yet internal silos and unclear handoffs created vulnerabilities.

The first feedback loop was loud and clear: a missed payment highlighted the fragility of the process. It wasn’t just a billing error—it was a wake-up call. A system designed for monthly reporting didn’t fit a weekly, high-urgency requirement.

The Turning Point: Seeing the Whole System

Rather than treating symptoms, I applied a systems thinking approach to reveal the deeper structure behind the surface problem. We created a full visual of the payment process—who touched what, when, and where risks emerged. This illuminated gaps across teams, misaligned timelines, and redundancies that had been masked by siloed workflows.

These tools didn’t just clarify the external feedback loop between PJM and our retail energy supplier—they also exposed internal feedback loops that had gone unnoticed. Communication breakdowns, missed timelines, and undefined responsibilities were not isolated events; they were signals of a misaligned system.

Immediate Needs, Long-Term View

The nature of PJM’s weekly payment cycle demanded a rapid response, but the underlying contract was set to last for years. We needed to act quickly and design a system that could sustain performance over time. That’s where systems thinking made the difference—allowing us to stabilize short-term operations while laying the foundation for adaptive, long-term collaboration.

Once the system was visualized, accountability became shared rather than siloed. Teams could see not only their own role, but how their actions impacted others—reinforcing a new culture of proactive coordination. Feedback loops that had once felt chaotic became sources of learning and alignment.

More Than a Fix: A Living System That Adapts

What made this systems approach so valuable is that it gave us tools to respond to the rigid demands of a high-stakes environment while also making strategic, efficient decisions in real time. Like the rudder on a ship, we were able to adjust course as needed—but always with an eye toward the ideal state: a system that adapts quickly, reliably, and intelligently.

When new financial red flags emerged in the following weeks and months, the foundation we’d built allowed us to respond not with panic, but with precision. Cross-functional collaboration became second nature. Instead of scrambling, teams adapted. Problems were addressed swiftly, without blame, because the system itself had been designed to evolve.

This is the difference between managing like a machine, and evolving like a living organism. A machine may operate efficiently under stable conditions, but it can’t adapt when conditions change. An organism, on the other hand, thrives on feedback, adjusts in real time, and becomes stronger through each iteration.

That’s what systems thinking enabled: not just survival, but transformation.

Why It Matters

This case is a real-world example of how systems thinking can uncover both the immediate pressure points and the structural changes needed to respond effectively. It turns chaos into clarity, crisis into coordination.

In a volatile world, it’s not enough to “fix” the problem. We must re-see the system—so the next time feedback emerges, it comes not as a surprise, but as an opportunity to adapt.