Most agency founders eventually hit the same quiet crossroads. 

The work is good, the clients are happy, and you’re far from “struggling.” But the pipeline isn’t behaving the way it used to. 

Deals feel slower. Opportunities feel thinner. You catch yourself refreshing your inbox like the universe owes you an apology.

A few moments usually give it away:
 • You see 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 and know they won’t get you to the next stage
 • You watch 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐩 𝐮𝐩 offering everything and blending you into the noise
 • You catch yourself 𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 just to keep the deal moving

Those forces hit at the same time. More competition, more noise, and fewer dependable paths to demand. 

If you don’t have a strong, deliberate way to create inbound or outbound interest, you end up relying on whatever comes your way. That’s when the ceiling appears. 

You know you can grow, but the path isn’t obvious anymore.


Most people think the answer is more tactics. 

More content, more channels, more anything. They want a shiny SOP. 

But tactics don’t fix the structural reason a pipeline thins out. 


The real issue is that 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 across the business. 

It’s not creating clarity. It’s not giving your buyer a reason to choose you. It’s not steering your team’s decisions. 

And without that, you stay dependent on luck.


This is where my work fits. And no, it’s not the part where I pretend there’s a magic template that fixes everything. 

I help agency founders rebuild the foundation so their business creates its own demand instead of waiting for it. 

Not by giving them a sexier tagline or a shinier message, but by tightening positioning in a way that touches everything: the audience you pursue, the problem you solve, the solution you deliver, and the systems your team runs without you hovering.


When it clicks, you feel it fast:
 • Your pipeline steadies because people finally understand why you’re the obvious choice 
 • Sales cycles shorten because your offer stops trying to be everything to everyone 
 • The business stops leaning on you for every decision and starts moving forward on its own


The Dynamic Agency OS is a coaching program that helps founders break out of dependency mode and build a business that stands on its own two feet. 

If you’re tired of gambling your growth on referrals and trying to differentiate in a saturated market, reach out. 

There’s a far cleaner way to build the next stage of your agency.

Chris DuBois

Taking a tip from David C. Baker today.

I'm off to Mississippi. 

Not because I want to, but because Uncle Sam has told me so. 

Might as well make the most, eh?

At least there's vitamin D there. 



(This is from The Business of Expertise. Read it if you haven't already.)

I help sub-$1M agencies break the referral ceiling and build positioning + marketing engines that create their own demand | Dynamic Agency OS

Agency clients don't convert on landing pages. They convert in conversations.

Your website can build trust. Your content can build authority. 

But the moment someone decides to hand you five grand a month, that happens in a call, a meeting, or a DM thread.

Most agencies are optimizing the wrong thing.

They A/B test button colors like they're NASA and the button is the heat shield. 

They rebuild their pricing page for the fourth time this year and hire someone to fix their "funnel" the same way people buy a new guitar instead of practicing the one they have.

Meanwhile, the agency down the street with a Squarespace site from 2014 and a founder who picks up the phone is closing deals every week.

Your content and website's job is to get the conversation started. That's it.

Once the conversation starts, that's where your actual conversion rate lives. 

Most agency owners have never practiced that part.

They've never mapped the call. Never figured out the exact moment where the prospect stops comparing you to other vendors and starts thinking of you as the person who already gets it.

They just wing it, like a guy who learned to drive by watching other people park. 

Then they blame the leads.

The best agencies I work with run a sales conversation that feels like a consultation. 

By the end of it, the prospect has learned something about their own business they didn't know before they got on the call.

They're not being sold. They're being shown that you already see their problem more clearly than they do.

That's where the conversion happens. 

Not on the page. In the room.

If you're spending more time on your website than on your sales conversations, you are hand-stitching the napkins and microwaving the steak.

#agencies

PS - We're ramping up some events and activities in the Dynamic Agency Community. Come check it out.

My AI tool told me to stop building and go do actual work.

I've been using Claude Code to build a product.

Every day, I’ve been adding something new. Features, automations, etc.

I was three weeks deep into building something that would theoretically help businesses, while not actually talking to any businesses about it.

Then Claude Code, my own AI assistant, generated this line in a response: 

"You should probably be testing this live with clients rather than trying to build anything else."

My computer roasted me. And it was right.

I see this with agency owners constantly.

Someone with four clients will spend two weeks building SOPs for a team they don't have yet.

They'll map out a 47-step onboarding process for a pipeline that doesn't exist.

They'll customize a CRM for leads they haven't generated.

It feels productive. You end the day tired.

You have something to show for it. A Notion board. A Loom walkthrough of your new system.

But you didn't get a client. You didn't send outreach. You didn't have the conversation that actually moves the business forward.

AI is making this worse right now.

Everyone's in build mode. Building automations, building agents, building workflows.

Very few people are delivering anything to actual humans who pay them.


Here's what I've learned from watching this pattern play out across dozens of agencies:

The SOPs write themselves when you have enough clients.

You do the work ten times manually, and by the eleventh time, the process is obvious.

You don't need to architect it in advance. You need reps.

But reps means doing the hard thing.

Picking up the phone. Sending the email that might get ignored. Having the sales conversation where someone says no.

That's the real work.

The constraint you're avoiding is usually the one thing that would change everything.

Even my AI knows that.

#agencies

PS - If you're interested in using AI in your agency, the Dynamic Agency Community has a channel, just for that. Come join us.

There's a pattern I see constantly with agency owners who've been flat for 12-18 months.

They're good at what they do. Their clients are happy. Referrals come in.

But the referrals come in waves.

And between waves, there's no system generating demand.

So they do what feels productive: post more on LinkedIn, try a new lead gen tool, attend some networking events, maybe run a workshop.

None of it compounds. Because all of it is built on top of unclear positioning.

You can't market your way out of a positioning gap. More volume just amplifies the confusion.

The fix is sequential: Niche first. Then positioning. Then offer design. Then go-to-market.

Skip a step and you're building on sand.

I've watched agencies go from stagnant to their best revenue months within 60 days of getting this sequence right.

One went from launch to $1M ARR in nine months.

The difference wasn't effort. They were already working hard. The difference was clarity about who they serve, what they solve, and how they talk about it.

#agency #positioning

PS - Buckle up for the March cohort. 5 spots. 90 days to install the full system.

Link in comments.

Tapajyoti (Tukan) Das shared a survey where 43% of service firm founders said positioning, pricing, and packaging is their #1 concern.

Having coached agencies through this for years, here's what I'd add:

Those three things aren't separate problems. 

They're the same problem at different stages of clarity.

When your positioning is vague, you compete on price. 

When you compete on price, your packaging becomes "whatever the client asks for." 

And when your packaging is custom every time, your margins shrink, your team burns out, and growth feels like a trap.

The fix is sequential:
1/ Positioning first. Who do you serve and what specific problem do you solve better than anyone?
2/ Packaging second. What's the repeatable system you deliver to solve that problem?
3/ Pricing last. Once 1 and 2 are locked, pricing becomes a math problem, not a guessing game.

Most agencies try to fix pricing first. They raise rates or restructure retainers, then wonder why clients still push back.

Clients push back because they don't see differentiated value. And they don't see differentiated value because the positioning never gave them a reason to.

Start at the top. The rest follows.

Building Gia - growth platform for professional service providers

We surveyed founders of professional service firms. 

One question:

"What would you love to pick an expert's brain about?"

43% said the same thing

👉 Positioning, Pricing, and Packaging. 

Not delivery. Not hiring. Not ops, but How they show up in the market.

I'll be honest, I did not expect that.

But the rest of the top 5 was just as telling:

- Lead gen & top of funnel 
- AI & LLM ranking
- GTM strategy & growth 
- Scaling & productizing

Here's what struck me: these aren't "nice to have" growth problems. They're existential.

Positioning determines 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶. Get it wrong and you're competing on price with everyone who sounds like you.

Lead gen determines 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘱𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶. Most of the consultants I've spoken with don't have a pipeline problem — they have a pipeline avoidance problem. Big difference.

And AI ranking?  Nearly 3 in 10 founders flagged it — not because they're chasing a trend, but because they're already watching it eat into their referral traffic. Search isn't what it used to be. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity "who's the best GTM consultant for SaaS companies," the game is completely different.

The founders who treat positioning, lead gen, and AI visibility as one integrated problem, not three separate ones — are going to have an unfair advantage over the next 18 months.

I'm a fan of being transparent. 

But most agencies have to deal with prospects who refuse to be. 

So, what are the best translations you've uncovered

No alternative text description for this image

Senior Operations Leader | Embracing Unwavering Execution & Extreme Ownership Principles

I help organizations cut through complexity and turn operations into systems they can count on. With 20 years of experience, I have led cross-functional teams, managed a $200M contract portfolio, and delivered measurable results:

- $22M in savings through vendor management and strategic sourcing
- 25% profit margin gains through process improvement and operational efficiency
- 200+ corporate and endurance events produced over 15 years
- Large-scale budgets and project management across multiple functions

Core strengths: operations leadership, vendor management, contract management, strategic sourcing, process improvement, project management, budgeting, and event direction. I combine data-driven execution with a servant-leadership style shaped by Extreme Ownership and Echelon Front principles.

Outside of work, I am a runner, ultrarunner, GoRucker, and adventurer. The resilience and grit built on the trail inform every decision I make.

If you are looking for an operations partner who can optimize processes, manage vendors, and deliver events with measurable results, let’s connect.

“Jimmy’s integrity, bias toward action, and laser focus allowed our organization to scale…from the red into the black < 1 year, scaling >10X.” – Anoop Grover, COO

Jimmy Gabany

Most communication problems are not content problems.

They are leadership problems.

You can be right and still lose the room.

I have watched solid ideas get rejected because the tone was off. I have seen good feedback land wrong because it was delivered at the worst possible moment. I have done it myself. The message was fine. The timing was not.

Tact matters because respect matters. Tone matters because people read emotion before logic. Delivery matters because confidence and humility have to show up together. Timing matters because even the best point will fail if the person hearing it is not ready.

If you want alignment, slow down before you speak.

Ask yourself:

Is this the right moment?
Is my tone matching my intent?
Am I trying to win, or am I trying to solve?

Strong leaders do not just manage what they say. They manage how and when they say it.

That is where trust is built or lost.

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Extreme Ownership Muster 023

The OODA Loop

The Indirect Approach

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 Creating a Culture of Extreme Ownership

How to Navigate Micromanagement

CSCMP Supply Chain Foundations: The Essentials Professional Certificate

Certified Ultrarunning Coach

Change Management Professional Certificate by LinkedIn Learning

ServiceNow IT Leadership Professional Certificate

Negotiation Professional Certificate by American Negotiation Institute

The Debrief

Global Procurement and Sourcing Specialization

Google Project Management Certificate

The Readback

EOS® Integrator™️ Masterclass Graduate

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Safety and Risk Mitigation

Dichotomy of Leadership Foundation Course

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Technical Support Fundamentals

USSF D License

RRCA Certified Coach

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NASM PES

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Schwinn Cycling Instructor

Extreme Networks, Inc. (EXTR) is a leader in AI-powered cloud networking, delivering a unified platform that simplifies and secures IT operations. Our solutions help businesses address challenges and enable connections among devices, applications, and users. We push the boundaries of technology, leveraging the powers of artificial intelligence, analytics, and automation. Trusted by thousands of customers globally, our AI-powered cloud networking solutions and industry-leading support enable businesses to drive value, foster innovation, and overcome extreme challenges.

For more information, visit Extreme's website at www.extremenetworks.com or follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, X/Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The function didn't exist before I got there. Engineers were running their own contracts. Procurement wasn't in the room. Nobody owned the vendor relationships, the risk, or the outcomes.

I changed that. Built the operating system, the governance framework, and the accountability structure from nothing. I drive alignment across Finance, Legal, Procurement, InfoSec, and Insurance with no direct authority and no missed outcomes. Five stakeholder groups. Zero excuses.

The results: $200M+ portfolio under management, $22M+ in delivered savings, and contract cycle time cut from six weeks to three. AI-enabled workflows helped. Knowing what I needed before I walked into any negotiation helped more.

Senior Manager, Product Operations

Running B2B events at the executive level sounds straightforward until you're coordinating production across the U.S. and Europe, managing sponsors with six-figure commitments, and accountable to attendees who paid to be in the room.

Small core team. High standards. No margin for visible failure.

Margins up 25%. Vendor costs down 25%. Sponsorship revenue up 35%. CSAT above 95%.

In events, the product is the experience. If the experience breaks, everything breaks. It hasn't.

Event Director

Built the operating model from nothing. Repeatable systems, budget ownership, vendor strategy, and the rhythm that kept multi-location events from turning into chaos. Set the standard the Event Director role runs on today.

Head of Operations / COO

Running a business for 17 years alongside full-time executive roles isn't a side hustle. It's proof of capacity.

I built Elemental as an endurance athlete and coach because I understood the problem from the inside. That's still true. When you're timing 800 athletes at 5am on a mountain, everyone on the crew knows their job, owns their piece, and doesn't wait to be told what to do when something goes sideways. That's not an accident. That's the standard I set.

200+ road, trail, and track events. 99% timing accuracy. 30+ events a year. Clients come back because we show up and get it right.

Founder

Nevada's cannabis market expansion was the Wild West. New regulations, high stakes, no playbook.

I ran operations through all of it. Team of up to 200 people. Rapidly scaling, heavily regulated environment where hiring fast without lowering the bar wasn't optional, it was the job. I built the leaders inside the org who carried the standard when I couldn't be in the room.

Scaled wholesale more than 10x. Grew revenue 50%. Maintained less than 0.1% inventory variance across multimillion-dollar stock throughout the entire growth cycle. Managed capital projects from $10M to $50M including full facility builds and operational expansion.

One compliance miss could have shut the business down. Nothing did.

Head of Operations / General Manager

Fortune 500 clients. MGM properties. High-profile events where visible failure wasn't an option and nobody got to have a bad day when the client was watching.

15+ multimillion-dollar events. Production teams of 50+ per event. On time, on budget, 95%+ client satisfaction. We got called back.

Event Manager

SageWater specializes in large-scale residential repipe and rehab. I ran operations across 2,000+ projects in Nevada with crews and staff of 50+ running dozens of concurrent jobs at any given time.

Leading in high-volume construction means setting a standard and then building the supervisors and crew leads who carry it without you standing over them. You can't be on every job site. You build people who don't need you to be.

Senior Project Manager

Combat Engineer. Logistics Technician. Armorer. Schweinfurt, Germany.

I managed equipment ordering and supply chain for an armored unit, owned weapons accountability for the unit, and led soldiers in a zero-failure environment. Leadership in the Army isn't theoretical. You set the standard, you model it, and your people either meet it or they don't. There's no gray area.

It's where the standard got set.

Combat Engineer

Operations Leader | I Build the Systems That Keep Companies From Falling Apart | Extreme Ownership | Vendor Strategy | Event Execution

Strong leaders admit when they do not know.

Not because it sounds humble. Because it is efficient.

Pretending to have every answer slows the room down. People wait. They defer. They hold back ideas because they assume the leader already decided.

The moment you say, “I don’t know,” something shifts. The team leans in. Ownership spreads. Solutions get better.

Needing help is not weakness. It is awareness.

If you are the smartest voice in every conversation, you are probably talking too much.

I got a new tattoo last month.

Jocko's GOOD. Right on my forearm, where I see it every day.

It is going to grow. Eventually, it will include the end of that same piece:
"Get up, dust off, re-load, re-calibrate, re-engage. And go out on the attack."

People will ask why. Here is the honest answer.

It is too easy to slip into the negative. Things break. Plans fail. Races go sideways. Deals fall apart. The world will give you plenty of reasons to focus on what went wrong.

GOOD forces an interruption. The computer dies mid-race. Good. I already have a backup running. The event hits a wall. Good. Now I know exactly where the weak point is. The plan falls apart. Good. The plan was probably wrong anyway. The negotiation went sideways. Good. I learned a better technique.

This is not optimism. It is a discipline. And like any discipline, it has to be practiced until it becomes automatic.

That is why it is on my arm.

Because some days I need the reminder before my brain goes somewhere less useful.

As a leader, your mindset is contagious. If you spiral, the room spirals. If you reset and move, the room moves with you.

GOOD is the reset.

#leadership #operations

50 plus pounds on my back. 75 minutes. Pavement.

Dragging that kind of weight around is not fun. I want to be clear about that. Nobody is out here loving every step of a ruck. You just do it anyway.

This is prep for the Ruck Race League March Challenge. 25 percent of bodyweight for 75 minutes. The Furnace. It is exactly what it sounds like.

I do it because discipline equals freedom. And because I cannot ask anything of my team, my family, or anyone in my chain of command that I am not willing to demand of myself first.

Here is the controversial part.

If you cannot lead yourself, you are not a leader. You might be a manager. You might be in charge. But leadership requires something more than a title or authority. It requires that the people around you actually want to follow you.

That starts with how you show up when nobody is watching. The early morning. The extra weight. The thing you do not want to do but are committed to anyway.

People are paying attention even when you think they are not. They are watching whether your standards apply to you or just to them.

Be the person people choose to follow.

Not because they have to. Because they want to.

#leadership

This is my amazing wife, Sandy.

New Year's Eve. End of her first 100 miler.

She did not finish because she felt good. She finished because she refused to stop.

Blisters. Aches. The kind of tired that sits in your bones and starts negotiating with your brain around mile 60. Every step after that is a choice. Not a physical one. A mental one.

The body will lie to you. It will tell you that you have nothing left. That stopping is reasonable. That you have already done enough.

Discipline is knowing the difference between actually done and just uncomfortable.

Sandy knows the difference.

I have watched a lot of people train for events like this. The ones who finish are not always the most fit. They are the ones who learned to keep moving when every reasonable thought says stop.

That lesson does not stay on the trail. It follows you into every hard thing after.

Grit is not something you have. It is something you practice until quitting stops feeling like an option.

She rang that bell.

#leadership #operations

It has been a while since I have actually run.

Torn quad in December took care of that. No regrets, though. It is not every day you get to play laser tag supervised by Navy SEALs/SpecOps guys.

Today, it is one foot in front of the other. No fanfare. No applause. Just moving.

That is how most things worth doing actually get done. Not with a grand moment or a perfect starting point. Just a decision to start and the discipline to keep going.

Dean Karnazes said it best.
"Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must. Just never give up."

That applies well beyond running.

Whatever you are working through right now, just keep moving forward.

#leadership

5,000 people. Wilmington. Last weekend.

My primary timing computer died mid-race.

First instinct is to react. Fix it fast, fix it loud, let the stress show. That instinct is wrong.

Detachment is not distance. It is discipline. You pull back just far enough to see the problem clearly without your emotions making it worse. Then you act.

I switched to the backup that was already running. Results slowed. The primary timing company stressed. I stayed calm, kept the team steady, and fixed it.

Nobody on that course knew anything went wrong.

That is what Echelon Front means by detachment in practice. Not checked out. Not cold. Just controlled enough to respond instead of react when something breaks in front of a crowd.

The job is not set up. The job is what happens when it breaks.

#leadership #operations

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

What stands out to me is the second half.

Failure is part of the work. Projects stall. Events break. Decisions miss. Anyone operating at a real level will fail at some point.

The real danger is getting comfortable with it.

I have seen teams normalize underperformance. Deadlines slip, and everyone shrugs. Standards drift, and no one calls it out. Over time, that becomes the culture. Not excellence. Not urgency. Just acceptance.

There is a difference between learning from failure and settling into it.

One builds capability. The other builds mediocrity.

The leaders I respect do not panic when something goes wrong. They also do not ignore it. They dissect it, fix it, and reset expectations. Calm. Direct. Unapologetic about the standard.

Failure is not the problem.

Comfort is.

Courtesy of Echelon Front

Echelon Front

Nobody has ever left a meeting thinking "I wish that had been longer."

Corporate culture did not collapse overnight. It drifted.

One small compromise at a time. A missed conversation here. An ignored signal there. A push for output without a pause to ask what it is costing the people doing the work. Over time, that drift becomes the new normal.

There was a time when steady leadership and earned loyalty were not buzzwords. Managers knew their teams. Expectations were firm. Respect was mutual. If something went wrong, it was addressed directly. If someone did well, it was recognized without being turned into a campaign.

Now, too many environments feel transactional. People are treated like interchangeable parts. Pressure flows downhill. Recognition flows upward. Leaders talk about culture while quietly rewarding behavior that undermines it.

If you want to change the trajectory, start with yourself. Keep your word even when it is inconvenient. Set standards and hold them without shifting them to fit the mood. Protect your team when the pressure rises instead of using them as insulation.

Loyalty is not a perk. It is a response to consistent behavior. When people feel respected and treated fairly, they commit. When they feel used, they disengage.

Culture is not what you declare. It is what you tolerate and reinforce every day.

Timing in the mud and rain!

Elemental Race Timing

Elemental Race Timing

Detachment is not distance. It is discipline.

At Echelon Front, detachment means stepping back far enough to see what you cannot see when you are in the middle of it.

When you are too close, everything feels urgent. Every issue looks personal. Emotions rise. Decisions get reactive.

Detachment creates space. You pull back. You assess. You ask what actually matters right now. The problem often looks different from ten thousand feet.

I have had moments where staying in the weeds felt responsible. It was not. It made me slower and more emotional. The solution did not show up until I paused and looked at the situation without ego attached.

Detachment is not cold. It is controlled. It is choosing to respond instead of react.

If things feel chaotic, you might not need more effort. You might need more perspective.

"The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."
Ralph Nader

If your only goal is to create followers, that is an ego problem.

Great leaders raise people up without worrying about being outgrown. They share what they know. They put people in positions to succeed. They celebrate when someone they developed moves past them.

Being part of the process that makes someone better than you says more about your leadership than any title or follower count ever will.
I have seen leaders hoard knowledge because they were afraid of being replaced. That is not leadership. That is insecurity with a job title.

The best leaders I have been around made themselves less necessary over time. Not because they checked out, but because they built people who did not need them for the basics anymore.

That is the goal.

If everyone around you is dependent on you for answers, you have built a following. If everyone around you is solving problems, growing, and pushing past where you found them, you have done the job.

One of those is leadership. The other just feels like it.

#leadership

Meetings are not work.

They are either alignment or avoidance.

If you leave without a decision, an owner, and a next action, it was not productive. It was theater.

Fewer meetings.
More ownership.
Finish things.

Accountability is quiet.
Blame is loud.

If every mistake turns into a postmortem with twelve people defending themselves, you are not fixing the problem. You are just assigning fear.

Teams that feel safe owning mistakes fix them faster.

Teams that feel hunted get very good at hiding.

Choose which one you want.

Leadership is not a title. It is a ripple effect.

If the people around you are thinking bigger because of your example, that is leadership. If they are pushing themselves to learn more, take on more responsibility, and raise their standards, that says more than any promotion ever will.

I have worked for leaders who talked about vision all day. Few inspired it. The ones who did were consistent. They showed up prepared. They admitted mistakes. They held the line when standards slipped. You did not just hear what they believed. You saw it.

Inspiration is not hype. It is modeling.

If your team is growing, stretching, and stepping into more than they thought they could handle, you are doing the job.

If they are shrinking, playing it safe, or waiting to be told what to do, something needs to change.

Leadership is measured in who people become because you were in the room.

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

I like this because it shifts the focus away from optics.

Success is easy to measure on paper. Titles. Revenue. Followers. Awards. Value is harder to fake. It shows up in whether the team performs better because you are there. Whether problems get solved faster. Whether people grow under your leadership.

Chasing success often turns inward. How do I look? What do I gain? Being of value turns outward. Who benefits? What improves? What moves forward because I showed up?

In operations, value is not glamorous. It is fixing what is broken. Removing friction. Making someone else’s job easier without needing credit for it.

If you aim to be useful long enough, success usually follows.

If you aim only at success, you risk missing the point entirely.

Where are you adding real value right now?

Today I am cleaning up a mess that did not have to happen.

Someone went around the team. Skipped the people who could have helped. Made the move that looked good for them in the moment and left the wreckage for everyone else to deal with.

This is not a skill problem. It is a character problem.

Teams exist because no single person has every answer. Using your teammates is not a sign of weakness. It is how the work actually gets done without creating casualties along the way.

The people who go around the team are usually optimizing for how they look, not for the outcome. And it works, right up until someone has to come behind them and fix what they left.

I do not mind doing the work. That is part of the job.

What I mind is that it was completely avoidable.

Use your team. Ask for help. Let people do what they are there to do. The mission matters more than the moment you get to look like you handled it alone.

Do not be this person.

#leadership #operations

Strategy is easy. Execution is where most teams stall.

Everyone loves the high-level plan. Brainstorms feel productive. Slides look sharp. Then the meeting ends and reality steps in. No one owns the next move. Deadlines slide. Momentum fades.

It is rarely a talent issue. It is rarely a resource issue. It is the gap between the idea and the next concrete action.

Big plans fail when no one translates them into work that real people can actually do.

I have seen this pattern too many times. A new process rolls out. Teams nod in the kickoff. Monday shows up and confusion sets in.

What works is not complicated.

Write the steps in plain language.
Assign tasks to names, not departments.
Set deadlines measured in days, not quarters.
Follow up without being asked.

One stalled initiative on my team sat untouched for months. We broke it down, assigned ownership, tightened timelines, and delivered in weeks. No magic. Just disciplined follow-through.

Operational strength is not about talking well. It is about finishing what you start.

Are you building plans, or are you building outcomes?

Hiring should not be complicated.

The only real question is simple. Who is the best person for the role?

Not who is most convenient.
Not who is most similar to you.
Not who interviews the smoothest.

The best person is the one who can actually do the work at the level the role demands.

People often split this into two categories. Skill versus culture fit. As if they compete.

They do not.

If someone cannot operate within your standards, your pace, and your expectations, they are not the best person. And if someone fits the culture but cannot deliver, that is not a fit either. That is comfort.

The right hire can execute and elevate the room. They raise the standard. They do not need to be carried. They do not need constant translation. They add value quickly because they align with the team's way of working.

Culture fit is not about personality. It is about shared commitment to the mission and the standard.

Hire the best person for the role.

If you lower that bar for any reason, you will feel it later.

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Chris DuBois

Jimmy Gabany

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taplio

The Battle

Chris DuBois

Jimmy Gabany

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Chris DuBois's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJimmy Gabany's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreChris DuBois's LinkedIn Performance