The modern move that most founders are missing

Remember when we all believed marketing was the answer to everything?

Better…sexier offers..! Well architected funnels. Paid ads for testing. Playing the long game with SEO. That was the playbook.

And it worked…for a while. It got you attention. It got you clients. It got you momentum.

But here's what nobody tells you: the thing that takes you from $3M to $50M isn't a flashier funnel. It's how reliably everything runs behind the scenes.

I know. Not sexy. Not loud. But it's real.

And right now, while everyone's still obsessing over growth hacks, there's a massive opportunity hiding in plain sight: Operational Leverage.

Let look at why this is becoming soooo important today.

The Shift Nobody Saw Coming

I don’t have to tell you that the world is changing fast.

Costs are rising. Margins are getting squeezed. Businesses are facing more uncertainty than ever. A lot of owners are not sure what to do. Complexity seems to be increasing beyond what you feel comfortable handling.

Meanwhile, something interesting is happening. Companies that are focused on getting their operations right (the boring backbone stuff) are starting to pull ahead.

According to McKinsey, companies with strong operational foundations are seeing real gains in speed to market, quality, and customer satisfaction.

But what exactly is the modern definition of Operations and of Operational Leverage

What This Actually Looks Like

I want you to see a new picture in your mind when you think about the org chart.

Imagine your company as a wheel. At the center sits Operations — not as paperwork and admin, but as the hub…the strategic backbone that holds everything together.

All your major functions including marketing, sales, product/services, fulfillment, finance become spokes attached to that hub.

Modern Operations isn't just tracking stuff. It's the system that:

• Maps how work flows across teams

• Makes handoffs predictable instead of chaotic

• Ensures everyone's working from the same playbook

• Gives the whole company one scoreboard to play from

When you bring in automation or AI tools, you don't just bolt them on randomly. You plug them into this backbone. They run smoothly because they have context, alignment, and purpose.

The result? Your company becomes a machine that runs predictably, effectively, sustainably.

Why This Works…Backed By Evidence

Here's what the data shows:

Strong operations lead to better business outcomes. Companies that commit to operational discipline see improved efficiency, reduced waste, better quality, and more predictable delivery. They're also much more likely to survive, grow, and avoid the collapse that hits so many scaling companies.

It makes you resilient. When you have solid operations, you can handle market swings, supply-chain problems, or staffing changes without everything falling apart. You bend instead of break.

You can scale through complexity. This might be the most powerful benefit. When your operations are solid, you escape the "everything depends on the founder's brain" bottleneck. You can hire, grow, expand — without sacrificing quality, customer experience, or your sanity.

You make mistakes predictable instead of fatal.

Real Companies, Real Results

You don't need to be a Fortune 500 company to make this work. I've led, coached, and watched smaller companies (in the $2M to $30M range) make this shift and build quiet, powerful momentum.

Example 1: The Software Company That Stopped the Bleeding

A small software company was drowning. Developers, project managers, and support teams worked in silos. Deadlines slipped constantly. Clients complained. Everyone was stressed.

They finally sat down and mapped out every step: from contract signed → to development → to QA → to delivery → to billing. They assigned clear ownership. They created a shared flow map that everyone could see.

The result? Deliverables became consistent. Quality improved. Customer complaints dropped. And here's the beautiful part: despite no major marketing push, revenue stabilized and clients stayed longer because they trusted the consistency.

Example 2: The Service Company That Found Its Footing

Another company — a growing service business — had constant mix-ups. Who handles billing? Who addresses customer issues? Who handles renewals? Everyone wore multiple hats. Mistakes happened. Clients left.

They decided to get serious. They wrote down, step by step, who owned what, how each handoff should work. They trained people. They created simple dashboards to track tasks, deadlines and outcomes.

Within a few months: fewer mistakes, better follow-through, happier clients. And when they added new clients, those new clients had a better experience…were happier…and stayed longer.

These aren't huge corporations. They're people like you. But they got the levers right, and it gave them the confidence to grow…more clients, more funding, more staff with the structure no longer breaking, but handling it all.

Where This Works And Where It Can Backfire

Let me be straight with you. Operations isn't magic. It works powerfully in some situations and can hurt you in others.

When it wins:

• Everyone gets on the same playbook…transparency, clarity, aligned expectations

• You get repeatable, predictable results that support growth and hiring without chaos

• You build resilience to handle unexpected stress (cost changes, team shake-ups, supply problems)

• When you add automation or AI, you scale smarter…better output with fewer headaches

But watch out:

• Over-systematize everything and you kill flexibility. Some problems need creativity and one-off thinking. Too much rigidity slows you down.

• Operations doesn't create demand. If your marketing, product, or market fit is weak, the house is still empty. Operations serves demand; it doesn't create it.

• It takes discipline. Mapping flows, standardizing handoffs, getting buy-in…that all takes time, energy, and patience. It won't magically fix your business overnight.

• Culture matters. If your team resists structure or fears "bureaucracy," operations becomes friction instead of leverage.

The key is balance. Structure where it’s needed. Flexibility to still allow creativity.

4 Moves You Can Make This Week

If you want to start building this quiet advantage, here's where to begin:

1. Draw your "hub and spoke" company map

In Notion, a whiteboard or doc, put "Operations" in the center. Then draw spokes for Marketing, Sales, Product, Fulfillment, Finance, Manufacturing (whatever functions you have).

Under each spoke, jot down how they currently connect. Who talks to who? What gets handed off when? Where do things break?

2. Pick 2-3 core workflows and map them

Choose the critical handoffs in your business. For example:

• Sales → fulfillment

• Product request → Development → QA

• Customer support → Billing

Write down step by step: who does what, when handoffs happen, where delays or mistakes usually occur.

3. Choose one painful workflow and standardize it

Pick the one that hurts most right now. Write a simple "how-to" process: who's responsible, when they act, what triggers the next step.

Share it with the team involved. Explain why. Get their feedback. Then treat it as the new process, not a suggestion.

4. Define one "north-star operations metric" for the quarter

Pick one metric that matters most right now:

• Percentage of handoffs completed on time

• Average cycle time from sale to delivery

• Errors per delivery

Post it somewhere visible: Your Company OS, pinned team chat, board, meeting agenda. Make it the thing everyone knows matters.

The Bottom Line

Growth doesn’t often work just by turning up the volume.

Good operations doesn't look flashy. It looks ordinary. Reliable. Scalable. Almost boring.

A mentor of mine years ago said “Business should be boring..” It took me years to fully understand what he meant. I can tell you now that it’s true. Part of our jobs as founders is to take the complex and make it simple. That’s one of the new jobs of Modern Operations.

While everyone else is chasing the next marketing hack, you will be building the foundation that makes everything run faster, leaner, stronger. The marketing you do works better. The sales you close convert better. The clients you serve stay longer.

All because the backbone is strong.

You built a business by mastering marketing. Now it's time to master the thing that makes marketing sustainable: operations.

If you treat operations like the backbone (the steady engine of your company) you build something that scales without falling apart.

And that's how you go from good to great without burning out along the way.