Operational intelligence, three times a week.
Sharp, opinionated writing on KPI design, operating cadence, and the craft of running a modern operations team. New posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
More from the field
30 postsStop Benchmarking Competitors. Do This Instead.
Stop chasing competitor vanity metrics. The most effective benchmarking focuses on improving your own internal processes, not just tracking external results.
Fix Your Broken Weekly Business Review
Stop reporting on outputs and start managing inputs. This guide shows you how to fix your weekly business review and build a true performance loop.
Stop Reporting, Start Looping: Fix Your Weekly Cadence
Stop wasting time on status reports. This guide shows how to transform your weekly cadence into a true performance loop that accelerates growth.
Fix Your Ops Hiring: Use a Work Simulation
Stop relying on talk. A well-designed work simulation is the single best predictor of success for an operations hire. Here’s how to do it right.
SOP Adoption: Your Team Isn't the Problem
If your team ignores SOPs, the issue isn't them—it's the process. Design workflows that drive adoption and execution.
Your SLAs Are Hurting Support Quality
Your SLAs might be encouraging your team to close tickets, not solve problems. It's time for a new approach to support quality and SLA management.
Benchmarking Performance: How to Compare Without a Crook
Stop weaponizing data. Learn how to use performance benchmarks to foster collaboration and improve your entire operation, not just create toxic leaderboards.
Skip the Advisor, Get an Operator Coach
Stop paying for high-level advice you can't implement. An operator coach provides the tactical, in-the-weeds guidance needed to turn strategy into execution.
Stop Blaming Teams: True Cross-Functional Accountability
Stop the cross-departmental blame game. This guide shows you how to build a system of shared ownership that drives results and eliminates finger-pointing for good.
SOPs Are Dead. Use Dynamic Workflows.
Stop treating SOPs as static documents. This guide shows how to drive SOP adoption and operational excellence with dynamic, human-centric workflow execution.
Finance Ops Visibility: Run a Daily Cash Flow Scoreboard
Stop flying blind. A simple cash flow scoreboard gives operators the real-time financial visibility needed to make smarter, faster decisions every day.
The Blame Game: How to Fix Cross-Functional Accountability
Stop projects from falling through the cracks. Our framework for cross-functional accountability clarifies ownership and prevents delays between teams.
The Ops Hiring Trap: Stop Hiring 'Athletes'
Hiring smart generalists for your ops team isn't enough. Without structured onboarding and clear success metrics, you're setting them up to fail.
Stop Hiring. Re-Onboard Your Ops Team Instead.
Your hiring firehose won't fix a leaky bucket. This guide explains how re-onboarding your current ops team can fix legacy issues and unlock performance.
Inventory Signal: Find Shortages Before the Spreadsheet
Stop waiting for your spreadsheet to tell you you're out of stock. Learn to separate inventory signal from noise and detect real shortages early.
Your KPIs are Vain: A Guide to Actionable KPI Design
Most SMBs track the wrong things. We'll show you how to distinguish vanity metrics from the decision metrics that link directly to operational and financial outcomes.
The 25-Minute Scoreboard Review That Drives Action
Stop wasting time in reviews that go nowhere. This is a playbook for a 25-minute weekly scoreboard review that forces hard questions and drives immediate, measurable action.
Fractional COO: Your First 90 Days to Real Results
Stop paying for stale advice. A truly effective fractional COO will spend the first 90 days wiring your operation for management by statistics, not just another PowerPoint.
Customer Ops SLAs: Isolate Signal in Quality Scoring
Stop letting vanity metrics dictate your support quality. Learn to build customer ops SLAs that measure what actually matters and drive real improvement.
AI in Operations: Where Assistants Outsmart Dashboards
Your dashboards show you lagging indicators. An AI assistant tells you what’s happening now, why it matters, and what you should do about it next.
Your Tribal Knowledge Is Killing Your Growth
Tribal knowledge is the silent killer of operational efficiency. It’s time to stop relying on key people and start building a resilient system with living SOPs AI can use.
Beyond Dashboards: A Real Integrations Strategy
Tired of stale dashboards? The key isn't another BI tool, but a defensible operational data substrate built on a coherent integrations strategy. Ditch reactive reports for real-time action.
Demand Forecasting for Lean Ops Teams
Stop guessing. Build a rolling 13-week demand forecast without a data scientist. A guide for lean operations teams using simple, effective models.
Pragmatic Capacity Planning for Lean Teams
Stop guessing and start planning. This guide offers a pragmatic approach to capacity planning for lean service and ops teams, enabling you to match resources to demand without complex models.
SLA Scoreboards: Protect Margin, Not Just Response Time
Most SLA scoreboards are a vanity metric theater. They incentivize the wrong behaviors, burn out your team, and tell you nothing about profitability or operational health.
Hiring Operators: A 60-Day Scorecard
Stop making bad hires. A scorecard-driven approach to hiring operators forces you to define success and measure performance in the critical first 60 days.
Operating Cadence: The Weekly Loop That Changes Behavior
Most performance management is theater. A weekly operating cadence focused on inputs, outputs, and direct feedback is the only way to drive real behavior change.
Beyond RACI: A Model for Cross-Functional Accountability
RACI charts create the illusion of clarity but diffuse responsibility. Build real cross-functional accountability with a single-owner, statistics-driven approach to KPIs.
The Annual Review Is Dead. Run a Quarterly Loop Instead.
Annual performance reviews are a waste of time. We show you how to replace them with a quarterly operational rhythm tied to scoreboard outcomes for better, faster results.
Enterprise Readiness: Your Pre-$1M Contract Checklist
Don't let a major enterprise contract break your operations. This is the operational maturity checklist to run before you sign a deal that will change your company.