Insights
What we notice when we stop and look. What works, what doesn't, and what most people are too busy running to see.
February 18, 2026
4 min readWe walked into a restaurant last fall. Best season in years, the owner told us. We asked how many of those people he'd talked to since. He looked at us like we'd asked him in a different language.
Read more →Local Business
February 18, 2026
4 min readMost small businesses are either scared of AI or waiting for it to become more obvious. Both are reasonable. Both are getting expensive. The entry point is a spreadsheet and a free tool you can open right now.
Read more →Local Business · Technology
February 12, 2026
4 min readI ran a program once where the evaluations came back 4.8 out of 5. A year later the engagement scores hadn't moved. That one stung. I'd built the thing.
Read more →Leadership
January 28, 2026
4 min readI sat in an IBP review once where the sales forecast, the operations plan, and the finance target were off by 22% from each other. Everyone in the room knew it. Nobody said it out loud.
Read more →Operations
January 14, 2026
4 min readWe've been building AI into actual workflows for the past year. Not proofs of concept. Not demos for leadership. And here's the thing nobody at the conferences is saying: most of the value had nothing to do with the AI.
Read more →Technology
December 3, 2025
3 min readI keep a running list of sentences that tell me something important about how a business is running. Near the top of it: "We had our best summer ever." The next question I always ask is: compared to what?
Read more →Local Business
October 15, 2025
4 min readI have a theory that you can predict whether a transformation will succeed by looking at where "change management" shows up in the project plan. If it's a single line item around week three, it's going to stall.
Read more →Operations
September 22, 2025
3 min readThe most common technology conversation I have with small business owners goes like this. They tell me about a problem. I ask what system they use. I ask if they've looked at the reporting section. They pause. Usually they have not.
Read more →Local Business
August 19, 2025
5 min readEvery time someone asks how to roll out a training program inside a large organization, my first thought is the same. I know where this is going. They are about to open the compliance system.
Read more →Technology
May 6, 2025
3 min readWe are married. We should get that out of the way. Between us, about thirty years inside one of the world's largest medical technology companies. Different functions, same problems from opposite angles.
Read more →March 10, 2025
4 min readEvery time something goes wrong — a port backs up, a supplier goes dark, tariffs shift overnight — the first call is always the same: "We need better visibility." Then someone buys a platform. Then someone builds a dashboard. Then the next disruption hits and nobody trusts it anyway.
Read more →Operations
Most of what we write about comes from patterns we keep seeing. If one of them is yours, let's talk.
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