Perspectives
Perspectives on operational leadership, fractional executive engagements, and the realities of scaling growth-stage IC and DoD contractors. Written from the seat, not from the sidelines.
COO is the most overloaded title in business. Ask ten companies what theirs does and you'll get ten answers. For most growth-stage GovCon firms, the pain isn't program execution; it's the organizational machinery underneath. That's a CAO problem, not a COO problem, and the cost of getting it wrong is high.
Technical founders build technical companies. Somewhere between 150 and 500 employees, the internal infrastructure hits a wall. The work is still excellent. Everything around it is fraying. The fix isn't another technical hire; it's the machine the company never built.
When organizations grow in the wrong way, the same things break in the same order. Communication first. Decision-making next. Then the management layer gives way. Culture goes last, and worst. The sequence is the point, and if you know it, you can get ahead of it.
Look at your CEO's calendar. Count the meetings. How many produced an actual decision, with an owner and a deadline? If less than half, you don't have a time management problem. You have a missing function. The Chief of Staff is the most leveraged seat in any organization, and the one growing companies almost universally either get wrong or skip outright.
We publish when we have something worth saying. The brand is quiet by design; the perspective is not.