Becoming Unbelievably Successful

How to build an operating model.

Start with the customer.



If you want to build your operating model on paper, do not begin with departments, titles, or org charts.

Begin with the way value flows to the customer.

The first step is to map the customer journey from awareness to delivery and service.

Write out each major step in the flow.

- How does the customer first find you?

- How do they engage?

- How do they buy?

- How do you deliver?

- How do you support them after the sale?

This becomes the centerline of your operating model because it shows how value is actually experienced.

Next, add the key operational activities that make each step happen. This helps you move beyond a vague customer journey and into the real work of the business. You are trying to see how the business performs, not just how it markets itself.

Then, across the top, add the administrative and management functions that oversee, guide, and control the flow.

This may include leadership, finance, human resources, legal, or planning.

These functions do not always touch the customer directly, but they shape how decisions are made and how the business stays aligned.

After that, across the bottom, add the support and infrastructure functions the customer rarely sees.

Think technology, supply chain, procurement, facilities, data, and other enabling capabilities. These are often ignored until something breaks, but they are part of what makes consistent delivery possible.

Once you have the full picture, review the page for gaps, overlaps, bottlenecks, and confusion.

- Where does work slow down? Where are handoffs unclear?

- Where are people relying on heroics instead of a system?

That is where your operating model starts to reveal both strengths and weaknesses.

An operating model should show how the business delivers value, how it is managed, and what supports it behind the scenes. If you cannot draw that clearly on paper, there is a good chance your business is running on habit instead of design.

Could you draw your operating model on one page today?

How important is customer experience in your business?

How do you measure the effectiveness of your operating model?



Customer Experience (CX)

When you look internally at your business, your operational metrics might look fine. Revenue is strong, throughput is solid, and employees are engaged.

That's great!

Except, when you're bleeding all over the floor.

I worked with a national nonprofit association. It had a huge focus on membership recruiting. Membership strength was extremely important to its mission of legislative influence.

To be nationally-relevant, it had to have at least 100,000 members. Otherwise, legislators on the Hill wouldn't care much about them.

So, they had massive membership recruitment programs. Its members were highly recognized for extensive recruitment activities.

The result? Huge annual recruitment numbers and massive recognition. Some chapters were recruiting thousands of members a year!

There was one problem...

Every year, they were declining in membership.

The most important metric, which looked great at the annual convention, wasn't all that great.

That's because when it came to the end of member's annual membership, most members that were recruited that year wouldn't renew their membership. Additionally, normal attrition of longer-term members was putting them in the red every year.

The front end of the operating model was working overtime, while the rest of the operating model wasn't doing anything!



When customers buy a product or service and receive inconsistent service and support, many businesses assume the problem is on the front end. The answer is to sell more ... add more customers.

What if you changed your focus to the back end of the customer journey?

Most businesses -- even transactional businesses -- have a "returning customer" component. Do you know what's yours?

Returning customers are easy to measure in a recurring revenue model -- they keep renewing. Transactional revenue models mean repeated purchases of the same product. All businesses benefit from referral business.

The front end of your operating model brings new customers in ... the rest of your operating model keeps them coming back (and referring others).

How much do you focus on the customer experience in your operating model?

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Why is an operating model important in business?

Does your business have a backbone?



The operating model of a business is your business's backbone.

It's also the Backbone of Scale.

Unfortunately, most businesses leaders have never defined their backbone -- their operating model.

If your strategy outlines where your business is going, the operating model does the same for how the business actually gets there.

Investing in strategy, but giving little thought to their operating model, is a recipe for business failure. The assumption is that if people work hard and processes improve, delivery will take care of itself.

That assumption may hold true for a small business that hasn't hit its growth spurt yet. But it does not hold true for one that needs to scale.

If your company doesn't have a backbone today, it will collapse when it needs to scale most.

An operating model answers fundamental questions about how work moves through the organization. It answers:

- How value flows from customer requests to customer delivery (and service).

- Who owns which decisions.

- How teams coordinate their work.

- What capabilities support delivery.

Without clear answers, businesses rely on heroic effort instead of scalable structure.

Many years ago, I was asked to meet with the President of a small business here in town. They were facing scalability issues and thought hiring a Director of Operations would solve the problem.

After briefly discussing their growth challenges, I pulled out an operating model that I had build just by reviewing their website and their LinkedIn business page. I clearly showed them visible gaps that existed in their operating model and that were causing their challenges.

However, they had never sat down and created or examined their own operating model. The president was actually very upset that I knew his business better then he did, and especially that I was able to glean the information from internet.

I gave the president specific recommendations on what to do to further grow and scale the business. One of the recommendations was to hire a COO, not a director.

The president told me that I didn't know what I was talking about.

Three years later, after the failed hiring of a director and three vice presidents, he called me back. On the call, he admitted that he didn't know what he was talking about and contracted me as a FCOO.

When you don't have a defined operating model, work gets completed, but it requires constant coordination, intervention, and problem solving. As volume and complexity increases, informal systems collapse.

None of these problems are random. They're simply signals that the business lacks or has outgrown its operating model.

When the backbone is weak, growth bends and breaks the entire structure.

When the backbone is clear, the organization can absorb more demand without losing stability.

Is the way work flows through your business intentionally designed, or does it simply exist?

How's your backbone?

My feet are doing the talking.

Stepping away from daily posting on social media.



Ten years ago, when we opened our equestrian business, social media was a good way to communicate and market.

Over the last few years, the desire of the platforms to push people to paying for ads has caused organic reach to dry up.

Thus, the value of posting daily on social media has ended.

I'll still post at least once a week, and I'll still engage with others, but I won't be on here nearly as much.

If you were a regular reader, but seldom comment, sorry. I'm sure we'll stay in touch.

Have a great 2026.

Are you holding yourself back?

Getting better at something means actually being bad at something first.



No one gets better at anything just by learning about it.

You have to 'do' it and 'suck' at it first.

That makes becoming good at anything a challenge, because we don't want to be bad at anything.

I remember when I sucked at golf. I really stunk at the game. I lost more golf balls than I would hit. I was so bad!

When I started playing with a friend of mine, back in 1998, we would pick up our golf ball and mark an "X" on the scorecard for each hole that we reached 10 strokes. That way we didn't slow down people behind us.

I had more Xs on my scorecard starting out than I had actual numbers!!!

One day, about a year later, at the driving range, something clicked. Suddenly, everything I had read and watched made sense.

Eventually, I reached a 15 handicap, which was pretty respectable for a hobby golfer. That basically meant that I would typically score 15 strokes over the course's "par."

"Par" for a normal golf course is 72.

A "scratch golfer" is someone that can typically finish a game at par or lower. Professional golfers are considered scratch golfers. This is a zero handicap golfer.

It took me about seven to eight years for me to get that good. And that's only considered "okay" in the golfing world.

But, when I started, I sucked!

I work with a lot of coaching clients that want to do something different with their lives. Maybe it's learning a new skill, maybe starting a business, or maybe getting a new job. What often holds them back from ever trying is that they don't want to be bad at it.

This innate fear of failing at something prevents us from ever trying -- from getting started. It prevents us from putting our neck out there waiting for someone to chop it off.

My scorecard full of Xs was demoralizing, to say the least. But I focused on the holes where I wrote a number -- those were the wins to build upon.

It's easy to do what you're doing today and not chase your dreams. But think of all the things you're missing.

What is it that you want to do, or where do you want to be, that you're not at today?

Is it sucking at it and probable failure that's holding you back?

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How does your business deliver value?

Why can't businesses definitively explain how they deliver value?



Ask most business leaders a simple question:

"How does your business actually deliver value to customers?"

The answers are often vague. You might hear things like:

"We take great care of our customers."

"We move quickly."

"We provide high-quality service."

Those are outcomes. They are not explanations.

In many businesses, the way value is delivered is not formally designed. It evolves over time through experience, habits, and individual effort.

Your business operates on an implicit operating model. Implicit meaning that it often not plainly expressed.

Work in the business gets done through:

Tribal knowledge

Informal handoffs

Personal relationships

Individual judgment

For a small team, this can work well. But as the business grows, these invisible systems start to crack. New employees can't see how the work really flows. Teams interpret strategic priorities differently. And processes emerge accidentally instead of intentionally.

What once felt "flexible" has now become "fragile."

The result is something many leaders struggle to explain:

"Business is busy."

"Customers are still being served, but the system behind the work is unclear."

This is the moment when business scale becomes difficult!

If the business cannot clearly explain how value moves from idea to delivery and even service, it cannot reliably repeat that flow as volume increases.

Improvements can make individual activities more efficient, but scale requires something different.

It requires making the operating model explicit.

If a new employee joined your company tomorrow, regardless of their role, could they clearly explain how value moves through your business and how they're a part of that process?

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Is your new business idea just waiting to be created?



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What behavior destroys a business?

Are beauty studios and baby concierges missing the core problem.



The new Target CEO unveiled his "turnaround strategy" with beauty studios and baby concierge services in 600 stores.

His goal is to win back customers...

However, I think he's missing the mark when it comes to Target's political brand damage.

Executives rarely emphasize publicly, brand polarization.

Target was caught in high-profile culture disputes in 2023 that led to boycotts, viral social media backlash, and a loss of core suburban shoppers.

Whether one agrees with the politics or not, the reality is that the retail brand suffered when they became a political symbol.

Business historically works best when it stays neutral and broadly appealing.

I had many conversations with Al Cini a few years ago around the question, "What were they thinking?"

When I was heading to Turkey for a remote assignment in the Air Force, we were told to never talk about religion, s*x, and politics. Of course, that's all my Turkish military counterparts wanted to talk about during our late night meetings. LOL

It was, afterall, during the time when President Clinton was being impeached for "not having s*x with that woman."

As the saying goes, "Opinions are like buttholes. Everyone has one, and they all stink."

However, these cultural opinions do not belong in business. Companies like Anheuser‑Busch, Jaguar, and Disney all had to learn the political and cultural lessons rather openly.

The fact is, when a business takes a public stance in these three areas, it will alienate a portion of your audience. Be prepared for the backlash to affect your bottomline.

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What do you think?

Too soon?



In business, when opportunity strikes, you take it, right?

But could there be a threat of jumping at an opportunity too soon?

OpenAI, seeing an opportunity to work with the government in the fallout of Anthropic, may have found themselves jumping too soon.

Stepping in to fill the AI void, ChatGPT's government land grab may have backfired.

Users responded with a significant uninstall of the app, while Claude installs hit the top of the app charts.

What are your thoughts?

Were you even aware of what was going on?

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How can you make improvement visible to all?

How do you focus everyone on sustaining improvements?



Have you ever watched Ted Lasso?

He put a handwritten sign above the locker room door that said, "Believe."

Though initially met with skepticism, the sign eventually inspired the players and coaching staff.

In the comedy movie, Major League, players peeled pieces of clothing off a cardboard cutout of the team's owner, Rachel Phelps, after each win. This was to spite her attempts to make the team bad enough to relocate.

These were two visuals that engaged the entire team to work hard and win.

I worked with a recycling company in Canada that was trying to improve their recycling process. They had a huge pile of recycling material outside the building because the process couldn't keep up -- the pile kept getting bigger.

We printed a huge picture of the pile and hung it in the plant. As improvements were implemented, we updated the ever-shrinking pile, until it was gone -- the process became good enough to keep up.

In a food warehouse, damaged and destroyed food was costing the company a lot of money. We built a visual of the annual money lost on the wall. Projects started pouring in on how to reduce the waste.

Working with a financial services firm, we wanted to encourage team engagement in continuous improvement. The executive over the operation would say, "100 pennies equals a dollar." He felt any and all improvements implemented were good.

We printed and hung a huge dollar bill in the office, surrounded by 100 pennies. Then, we had "Penny Flipping Ceremonies" where staff talked about their improvements, and we flipped pennies for each improvement.

Want to sustain improvements and engage staff? Make it visual -- something everyone can rally around. This way, employees can engage with and view a constant reminder of team success.

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Manage your constraints.

Sometimes the real world shows us key business concepts and concerns.



In 1984, the year after I graduated from high school, Eli Goldratt published The Goal, which was based on his concept of the Theory of Constraints (TOC).

It's and excellent book!

The Goal is based a management philosophy focused on identifying and managing the single, weak links in your system.

Sometimes, I refer to this as a "single point of failure." TOC refers to them as "bottlenecks."

You see them in the world all the time. They're on the highway where traffic is forced to converge. You see them in customer service where people queue up at a single tellers, cashiers, and service windows.

Today, we're witnessing this in the Strait of Hormuz, which is a sea passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Annually, 20% of the world's natural gas and 25% of the world's oil passes through the Strait.

In light of the Iran conflict, shipping through the strait has essentially ceased, stopping all outbound and inbound vessels.

In business, when there is an issue at a bottleneck or single point of failure, production slows and even stops. Business leaders should look across their operations and identify these points. Once identified, then you can determine how to deal with them.

The concept for business is clear:

Identify and manage your constraints in your operations before they manage you.

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Have you seen evidence of organizational myopia at work?

Have you ever witnessed silos at work?



Yesterday, we did a walk through of a couple of homes under construction. The builder was showing us the level of detail he goes into when building a home.

While we were touring one home in the framing stage, we noted blocking throughout the home.

These boards between studs add structural integrity to the walls, sometimes allow for mounting things like cabinets, and provide a fire blocking barrier.

In the master bathroom, a couple of the blocking boards had been forcefully ripped out as they were blocking (note the irony) the installation of light electrical boxes.

This is a typical example of the trades in construction not working together -- silos mired in organizational myopia.

Clearly the framers failed to recognize on the plans where light fixture boxes would be mounted when they installed the blocking between the studs.

The electrician (different trade) came in to install the fixture boxes and discovered the blocking right where the boxes would be installed.

Instead of working with the framers to simply move the blocking (or even adjusting the blocking itself), the electrician forcibly bashed one out of the way, so it hung loosely in the wall. The electrician then removed another one on the other side of the room, leaving it discarded on the floor.

This is a builder's nightmare -- the trades not working together to build a home, but actually working against each other.

There's a good chance that the builder will contact the framers to fix the blocking. They'll clearly see that the electrician caused the issue, creating rework for them. In retaliation, they might damage or destroy the fixture boxes, so the electrician will have to fix their work.

This is myopia at work...

How do you solve this?

Strategy

Well, start with reviewing the plan. The plans for building a house are like a strategic plan for a business. Understand the plan and align your work to support it. Areas, like light fixtures in the walls, should have been known.

Communication

Clearly the trades aren't communicating! Having a solid way to communicate issues and immediately solve problems eliminates frustration, delays, and costly rework. The builder can't be everywhere to identify and solve these type of issues.

Customer Focus

Always remember why you're doing what you do in your job. Your work isn't for your benefit -- the end user is the one that benefits. Do you think the trades had the homeowner in mind here? I don't think so.

Want to understand organizational myopia better and how to overcome it? Check out my book, Overcoming Organizational Myopia: Breaking Through Siloed Organizations.

Have you witnessed organizational myopia affecting your business?

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