The Operating Lane
A weekly essay on operations leadership at mid-market companies. Frameworks, audits, and observations from 15 years of scaling businesses. New issue every Tuesday.
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The Operating Cadence Nobody Installs Until It's Too Late
Most operating cadences weren't designed, they accumulated. Here's what a real one contains and how to audit the one you have.
When Scaling Multi-Site, Alignment Breaks Before Capacity Does
Most operators read multi-site scaling failure as a resource problem. The real breakage is quieter, and it shows up in your exception queue first.
Build It So Growth Can't Break It
Scalable and sustainable are two different builds. How to stand up a new operation, or a new division, from the ground up so growth strengthens it instead of collapsing it.
The Decision You Keep Calling a Dilemma
Most delayed operational decisions aren't information problems. They're commitment problems. Here's how to tell the difference and what to do about it.
When the Inherited Mess Is Still Your Mess
The attribution window closes faster than you think. Here's what owning an inherited operation actually requires, and what PE sponsors are watching for.
When Standardization Becomes the Enemy of the Standard
High audit scores and degrading outcomes aren't a paradox. They're what happens when the mechanism replaces the standard it was built to protect.
Most Operations Can't Tell You How Many People They Actually Need
The technician shortage is real, but it's hiding a bigger problem: most multi-site operations can't say how many people each site actually needs.
The Manager You Promote Is Not the Manager You Need
Promoting your best IC is the easy part. The transition fails because nobody redesigns what success looks like after the org chart changes.
The Decision You Keep Calling a Data Problem
Most delayed operational decisions aren't waiting on better data. They're waiting on willingness to act with what's already in the room.
The Performance Conversation You've Been Pricing Wrong
Avoiding the hard performance conversation isn't a courage failure. It's a pricing error, and six months of silence has a cost most ops leaders aren't running.
Your process map is lying to you
A framework for auditing the gap between documented process and the work that actually happens.
The Ramp Problem, the $16M Tax, and What Salesforce Didn't Put in the Press Release
Three things ops leaders need to act on this week: why billable ramp math protects margin during scale-up, why most supply chain disruption losses are a governance gap not a vendor problem, and what to do before you buy into the agent-layer products that just landed from Salesforce and Box.
The Fire You Stopped Noticing (And the Structure That Slows You Down)
This week: why slow-burn operational friction is more expensive than the crises you respond to, and why adding process reactively during scale almost always makes alignment worse before it helps.
The System Hasn't Kept Up With the Business
When coordination costs climb, dispatch software underdelivers, and critical knowledge lives in one person's head, the problem isn't your tools, it's that your operating model stopped scaling before you noticed.
You're Multiplying the Wrong Thing
This week's AI headlines call it a 'force multiplier', but for ops-heavy businesses, that's only good news if the force you're multiplying is clean.
The All-in-One Trap and the Stolen Hour: What This Week's AI News Actually Means for Your Operations
Three new AI platforms launched this week promising to automate everything at once — and Goldman Sachs says AI is already saving workers an hour a day. Here's why both headlines should make ops-heavy business owners pause before acting.
AI Said It Would Save You Time. So Why Is Everyone Working More?
New data shows AI is expanding the workweek by 40%, and for ops-heavy businesses, there's a structural reason why speed without process just creates more volume, not less chaos.
Why Most AI Projects Fail Before They Start
The pattern I see in every operations-heavy business that tries to 'add AI' without understanding where it actually fits. And what to do instead.