OPERATIONS AUDIT
Where the work actually goes, mapped against where you believe it goes. The gap between those two maps is usually the whole problem, and it is rarely where anyone expects to find it.
OPERATIONS & SALES STRUCTURE
Operational clarity, delivered.
Simple management and execution systems designed to improve consistency, accountability, and outcomes.
XIV
FOURTEEN
CONSULTING
EST · MMXXVI
- IPRACTICEOperations audits, sales structure, and operating cadence.
- IIAPPROACHFour steps, in order, from first look to final measure.
- IIIPRINCIPLESThe ideas underneath the work, and where they come from.
- IVABOUTFourteen years in operations, and where the name comes from.
- VCONTACTA short first conversation about what is not working.
PRACTICE
SALES STRUCTURE
Stages, ownership, territory, and compensation, rebuilt so the pipeline describes what is really happening rather than what everyone hopes is happening. A forecast is only as honest as the structure underneath it.
OPERATING CADENCE
The weekly and monthly reviews that let a plan survive contact with a real week. Most plans do not fail because of the strategy. They fail because nothing brings them back to the table on a schedule.
APPROACH
OBSERVE BEFORE CHANGING
A first pass that documents the system as it actually runs, not as the org chart describes it. Nothing gets changed in this phase. Owners are often surprised by what it finds, which is exactly why it comes before anything else.
NAME ONE OWNER
Every step in a process gets exactly one person accountable for it. Shared ownership is the most common failure I find, and it is almost always the cheapest one to fix.
SET THE CADENCE
Consistency comes from rhythm, not from effort. Once the review calendar is right, the system holds itself up without anyone having to push on it.
MEASURE THE OUTCOME
One number per process, reviewed on the cadence. If the number does not move, the change did not take, and we return to the first step instead of adding another layer on top.
PRINCIPLES
EFFORT IS NOT RESULT
Activity and progress are two different measurements, and the gap between them is worth watching closely. A team can work harder every week while the system moves less. Wyckoff read markets by comparing effort against result and treating any divergence as information. A pipeline can be read the same way, and the warning usually shows up in that gap before it shows up in the numbers.
RICHARD D. WYCKOFF · THE LAW OF EFFORT VERSUS RESULT
CAUSE SETS THE SIZE OF THE EFFECT
Nothing produces a quarter it was not built for. The structural work — process, ownership, enablement — is the cause, and it gets done in the stretch when nothing visible is happening. That is exactly when owners lose their nerve and abandon it. A short base cannot support a long move.
RICHARD D. WYCKOFF · THE LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT
DESIGN FOR THE FAST DECISION
Under pressure, people think fast, not carefully. A process that only works when everyone is deliberate is a process that fails in a busy week. Build so the quick answer is the correct one, and save careful thought for the few decisions that truly deserve it.
DANIEL KAHNEMAN · SYSTEM 1 AND SYSTEM 2 · THINKING, FAST AND SLOW, 2011
PEOPLE DEFEND WHAT THEY HOLD
A loss weighs more than a gain of the same size. This is why teams protect processes they will privately admit are broken, and why a change that takes something away stalls even when the arithmetic plainly favors it. Plan the order of changes around that fact instead of arguing with it.
DANIEL KAHNEMAN AND AMOS TVERSKY · PROSPECT THEORY · ECONOMETRICA, 1979
SEPARATE THE CONTROLLED FROM THE REST
In a poor operating review, half the time goes to people answering for outcomes they could not have changed. Name the inputs the team actually controls, hold people accountable there, and stop litigating the weather.
EPICTETUS · THE DICHOTOMY OF CONTROL · ENCHIRIDION
None of these ideas were written about operations. Wyckoff was reading the tape, Kahneman and Tversky were running experiments, and Epictetus was teaching in exile. What they share is a subject: how people behave when the outcome is uncertain. Operations has never run under any other condition.
ABOUT
The work is built to be left. A system that needs me in the room to function is a system I failed to build.
I spent fourteen years inside a large operations and sales organization, and five years as vice president of the board of a nine-hundred-home association — reserve planning, vendor contracts, insurance renewals, an engineering dispute, and the committees that carried the work. Governance is operations with the volume turned up: everyone is a volunteer, nothing is anyone's day job, and any process running on goodwill fails the first week someone is busy.
The titles mattered less than what those years taught me: which structures hold when nobody is watching them. This practice is built on that lesson. The name comes from those fourteen years, and XIV is how Rome would have written it.
CONTACT
The best first step is a short conversation about what is not working. Bring the process that frustrates you most.