You Don’t Have a Systems Problem
You Have a “Nobody Is Using the Systems You Already Built” Problem
A few months ago, I was on a weekly team call with one of our companies going through our usual rhythm. Wins, scorecard, issues. Same agenda we’d been running for a while.
One of the issues had come up the week before. And the week before that.
“I thought we came up with a solution for this last month?”
“I haven’t had time to create the process and share it with the team.”
Nobody was being lazy or negligent. The work was getting done. The business was running. The same problem kept showing up on the issues list, week after week, while everyone moved on to the next thing.
Sitting on that call, what I realized is that the real issue was upstream of the problem itself. Nobody on the call, me included, had agreed on what mattered most. Without that shared agreement, every problem looked roughly equal. So we worked on whatever felt urgent and the real one kept slipping.
That’s the problem most founders are actually trying to solve when they think they need a better operating system.
What I tried before I figured this out
I’m not someone who’s avoided operations work. I’ve gone deep.
My first real exposure to operating systems happened sideways. Gino Wickman, who created EOS, was actually a client of mine through my last company. Watching how he ran his business and listening to how he talked about EOS got me curious. So we implemented it in my own company.
It was a game changer. EOS is what made me realize there’s a real difference between a stack of SOPs (which tell you how to do tasks) and an operating system (which actually runs the company). Different things entirely.
After implementing EOS, I had an incredible facilitator who came out quarterly to work with my team. He was deliberate about focusing on only a few elements at a time. The binder was thick. The resources were endless. The point was never to use all of it. The binder existed so you could find the right section when a specific issue came up.
I also spent years with Strategic Coach, working with their coaches and with Dan Sullivan directly. I also worked with home services specific programs. I read every book I could get my hands on across operations, leadership, and scaling. Each of them gave me something.
What I noticed after a while is that the same handful of ideas kept showing up across all of them in different language. See the truth. Make the decision. Give real ownership. The frameworks varied. The core didn’t.
What also became obvious is that no single coach, system, or book solves operations for you. You either internalize the few things that actually run a business or you don’t. The rest is packaging.
Why I stripped it all down
About a year and a half ago I started asking a different question.
I stopped asking which operating system was the best and started asking which single thing, if a company actually went all in on it, would make the biggest difference for them.
Think about it the way you’d think about health. Someone decides to get healthy and immediately stacks ten things: drink a gallon of water, lift four times a week, run twice a week, take five different supplements, meditate every morning, intermittent fast, eat clean. Most people quit within a month because the lift is too much.
The person who actually changes their life usually does one thing. Cut out the sugar. That’s it. They feel the difference, it becomes the thing they just do, and then they add the next one from a position of momentum.
Businesses are the same. Most founders are trying to install ten things at once and wondering why nothing sticks. The team adopts none of it. Most of those systems end up sitting in folders nobody is opening.
The kind of operations that actually moves a business forward is the one where you commit to a small number of things and use them every week without exception. Using the few that matter beats layering in more.
The Operating Core
What survived after fifteen years of trying everything is five things. I call it The Operating Core.
Some of you are already thinking: didn’t I just spend three paragraphs telling you that the person who changes their life does ONE thing? And now I’m giving you five?
Fair catch.
Here’s the difference. These five aren’t a five-item checklist to install at once. They’re not a stack of habits to layer in. They’re the underlying architecture that any operating system you’ve ever tried was attempting to deliver. Once you see them, you can use any framework you want (EOS, Scaling Up, whatever) on top of them and it will actually stick. Without them, no framework will save you.
You don’t start by installing all five. You start with whichever ONE is the most broken in your business right now. For most founders I work with, that’s the Truth Stack (number two), they don’t actually have a clear picture of what’s happening underneath the surface. For others it’s Standards, because the team doesn’t share a definition of “good.” For others it’s Ownership, because the founder is the only one making real decisions.
So treat the five as a map. Find the one pillar that’s most broken in your business. Go all in on that one. When it’s working, the next one reveals itself.
That’s the “cut out the sugar” version of operations.
The order I’m presenting them in matters because each pillar makes the next one possible. So if you’re starting from scratch, you start at one. If you’re already running a business, you start wherever the biggest gap actually is.
One. Standards.
Standards come first because they’re the filter every other pillar runs through. If your team doesn’t share a definition of what good actually looks like, your numbers become debatable, your problems become subjective, and your meetings end up being arguments about whose read of the situation is right. Standards are what we don’t compromise on. They’re the floor and the direction at the same time.
Most companies skip this and go straight to dashboards. That’s why the dashboards don’t work.
Two. The Truth Stack.
Once you agree on what good looks like, you can measure where you actually are. The Truth Stack is the structured way of seeing reality. For a service business that usually means cost per lead, cost per opportunity, cost to acquire a customer, close rate, and customer satisfaction. One source of truth. One conversation a week to look at it together. Not 50 dashboards. The few numbers that tell you what’s actually happening underneath the surface.
Three. The Biggest Gap.
Standards minus Truth equals the Biggest Gap. Once you can see the truth honestly, the biggest problem reveals itself. This pillar is about resisting the urge to work on five things at once and instead getting the team aligned on the ONE thing that, if solved, would unlock the most.
This is the pillar I was missing on that team call I opened with. We knew the issues. We didn’t agree on which one mattered most, so we worked on everything equally and made progress on nothing.
Four. The Operating Rhythm.
Now you have a way to close the gap. The Operating Rhythm is the cadence of how the team actually works. For us that means a 1-Year North Star (the direction we’re moving for the next twelve months, not a 10-year vision), three outcomes per 90-day sprint (what EOS calls Rocks), and weekly meetings that end with a decision, an owner, and an agreed definition of done before anyone leaves.
Most people think operating rhythm is about meetings. It’s actually about whether decisions get made. When we got this right at one of our portfolio companies, the team went from 90-minute weekly meetings that ended in “let’s circle back” to 45-minute meetings that ended with decisions, owners, and dates. Same team, same agenda, but a real shift in what we walked out with each week.
Five. Ownership.
This is last because it only works if the first four are in place. Without Standards, Truth, Biggest Gap, and Operating Rhythm, “ownership” is just delegation with no infrastructure. Real ownership is what someone is willing to lose. It’s how they show up when nobody is watching. Hiring lives here too, because hiring is the entry point of ownership.
Why this matters more than which framework you pick
A lot of operations content sells you the next system, the next dashboard, the next coach.
What I’ve come to believe is that the system isn’t the point. The thinking underneath is. Five pillars, run consistently, will outperform any thick binder nobody opens.
The goal of getting these right isn’t operational excellence for its own sake. A business built on these five becomes something different. It can keep running without you working in it every day, hold its shape under pressure, and could be sold if you ever decided to.
I call this building to sellable. Whether you ever sell or not, sellable is the bar.
A business that requires you working in it every day to function isn’t an asset. It’s just a higher-paying job. And no founder I know got into this to build themselves a job.
If this resonated, the work over the next while is showing exactly what each of these five looks like in practice. Subscribe if you want it as it comes.
This resonates. In many finance and O2C environments, the challenge isn’t a lack of processes or tools, it’s consistent adoption and ownership. Clear standards, shared metrics, and accountability often create more value than adding another system or dashboard to the mix.
I really like this. So often the answer isn’t adding another system, it’s getting honest about what actually matters and committing to using the few things that already work.