⚙ Hi {{first_name_tally|Operator}},

You rebuilt the deployment checklist. Again.

Then you added a new approval workflow. A better standup format. A tighter sprint process.

The dysfunction came back wearing a different costume.

Here's what nobody tells you: Most of your operational problems aren't process problems. They're leadership problems you're too afraid to address.

This week's essay breaks down how to tell the difference—and what to do Monday morning when you realize which leaders you've been avoiding.

Three diagnostic tests. Five moves. One hard conversation you've been postponing.

Let's go.

- Rameel

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That’s where Momentum’s Prompt Library comes in — a private vault of prompts actually used in the field. Not “10 ways to boost productivity.”

We’re talking revenue ops reports, outbound campaigns, investor updates, even product specs.

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Every COO knows this at 2 AM, rebuilding the deployment checklist for the third time this quarter.

The checklist isn't the issue. Sarah won't tell Marcus his code is breaking prod. Marcus doesn't trust the QA team. Your VP thinks "driving alignment" means hosting more meetings.

The price tag: Gallup estimates $8.9 trillion annually in lost engagement worldwide—roughly 9% of global GDP.

Most operational problems aren't process problems. They're leadership problems disguised as process fixes. Until you address the person underneath, you're just rearranging deck chairs while your best people jump ship.

December 2022. Southwest Airlines cancels 16,700 flights over ten days.

The press calls it a "technology failure." DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg gets closer: "This wasn't just a weather event; it was a systems failure decades in the making."

But the post-mortems missed what was really broken: Southwest had legitimate technical debt—a crew scheduling system built in 2014 for point-to-point flying, not 2022 scale—AND leadership that consistently chose to ignore it. The pilots had been screaming about this exact failure mode for over a decade.

November 2022—one month before the meltdown—the pilots' union predicted the airline was "one IT router failure away from a complete meltdown."

The timeline tells the story:

2018: Internal audit flags "catastrophic risk" in aging crew scheduling system. Leadership defers modernization to prioritize short-term financial metrics.

2021-2022: Smaller meltdowns occur. Pilots picket for system improvements.

Summer 2022: They take to the streets with signs about technology infrastructure.

When the predicted disaster happened, leadership blamed the technology. The weather. The "perfect storm."

What they didn't blame: A 13-member board with zero technology expertise. A CEO who "was an accountant by education" and "did not spend much time on the front lines." A decade of choosing Wall Street over operational resilience.

The technology WAS outdated. But it was outdated because leadership refused to invest in modernization despite repeated warnings from the people operating the system. The broken scheduling system was the symptom. Leadership failure was the disease.

This is your pattern too. You see a process problem. You add a new tool, a better checklist, a tighter approval workflow. Initial excitement. Maybe it works for a quarter. Then the same dysfunction resurfaces in a different form.

Gallup's research shows managers account for up to 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across teams. When engagement is high, turnover drops 51% and productivity increases 23%. When it's low, you're bleeding talent, margin, and sanity. Only 31% of U.S. employees report being engaged at work.

You keep fixing the symptom. The underlying problem stays broken. You're avoiding the hard conversation.

Not every operational problem is a leadership problem in disguise. Sometimes the checklist really is broken. Here's how to tell:

Process problems affect everyone uniformly.

Team A and Team B use the same flawed deployment tool. Both struggle equally. Both teams have strong leaders who want to fix it. The bottleneck is genuinely the tool—outdated, missing key features, or poorly designed.

Leadership problems create variance.

Team A hits sprint commitments consistently. Team B is always underwater. Same process, same tools, same expectations. The variance reveals the variable: Team B's leader.

The heuristic: Look for clustering.

If the problem exists everywhere with equal intensity, you likely have a genuine process or tooling issue. Fix the system.

If the problem clusters around specific teams, leaders, or departments—if some teams thrive while others struggle using identical systems—you have a leadership problem. No amount of process will close that gap.

Run this test on your three nastiest operational problems right now. Where do they cluster?

Does this problem exist everywhere or just on specific teams?

Southwest's other operational areas worked during the meltdown. Same company, same culture, same cost focus. Some divisions had leadership that listened to frontline warnings. Others had executives who filtered uncomfortable signals.

Pick your three biggest operational headaches. Do they cluster around specific leaders? If yes, you know what the problem is. You've known for a while.

Name who owns fixing this. Five seconds.

Can't name anyone? No one is empowered or responsible.

Can name someone but they haven't fixed it? They either don't have authority, don't have consequences, or don't have your attention.

Named several people who "share ownership"? Everyone's responsible means no one's responsible.

Knight Capital lost $440 million in 45 minutes from a software deployment error. Emails about the bug bounced around the organization for weeks without reaching anyone with authority to act.

Victorian hotel quarantine guards used WhatsApp to coordinate during COVID. When the virus spread from quarantine hotels, the review found "no clear lines of accountability." No one could say who decided to use private security over police or military.

The CRM issue that's been "on the roadmap" for six months. The deployment pipeline that breaks every Friday. The approval workflow that takes four weeks when it should take four days.

Set a timer. Five seconds. Name the owner. If you can't, or if you name three people, you found the problem.

Who knew about this before it became critical?

If the answer is "frontline teams" and it's been over 30 days, you've been ignoring them.

Southwest's pilots warned for a decade. Boeing engineers whistleblowed for years about 737 MAX flaws before 346 people died. Uber employees reported harassment for years while leadership knew but didn't act.

Your version: CRM lag for six months. Friday deployment breaks. Approval workflows taking four weeks. Customer success flagging onboarding confusion for a year.

For each operational problem, ask: "Who told me first, and when?"

If the answer is more than 30 days ago, you've been ignoring them.

Your tests revealed leadership issues. Here's what you do.

Stop asking "What process will fix this?" Start asking "Why does Team A not have this problem?"

Team A's leader probably:

Team B's leader probably doesn't. No amount of process will close that gap.

List your three operational problems. Map them to leaders. The clustering will tell you everything.

Strip away the abstraction. Name what's underneath.

"Our deployment process is broken" becomes "Marcus doesn't trust QA to catch bugs."

"We have a communication issue" becomes "Sarah won't give Marcus direct feedback."

"Our roadmap approval takes too long" becomes "The VP won't delegate decision authority."

This feels uncomfortable. As long as you're naming process problems, you're avoiding leadership problems.

Rewrite your current "process improvement" list as people problems. Then decide which ones you have the courage to address.

Southwest's leadership filtered out uncomfortable truths. Pilots warned for a decade. Leadership optimized the signal away.

Do your frontline people believe telling you bad news helps or hurts them?

If they believe it hurts—or if they're not sure—bad news will ferment in silence until it explodes. You'll be blindsided by problems everyone else saw coming.

Ask three frontline people: "What's the operational problem you wish I knew about but haven't told me?" Their answer—and whether they're willing to give one—tells you everything.

Kim Scott's framework: Care personally + Challenge directly = Radical Candor.

Most operational failures are Ruinous Empathy. Caring without challenging. You know Bob is underperforming. You care about Bob. You don't want to hurt Bob's feelings. So you don't say anything. For ten months.

Then you fire Bob.

Bob's response: "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Scott's controversial claim: "If you can't offer radical candor, the second best thing you can do is be an asshole." Being an obnoxious aggressor who challenges without caring is bad. But it's better than not challenging at all.

Ruinous Empathy doesn't just hurt Bob. It hurts Bob's teammates who are compensating. It hurts the project bleeding momentum. It destroys your credibility when your best operators watch you add another process instead of addressing the person underneath.

The Sheryl Sandberg example: When Kim Scott said "um" repeatedly in a presentation, Sandberg first praised the work, then escalated: "When you say um every third word, it makes you sound stupid."

Care + challenge.

Research suggests only about 20% of organizations consistently address mediocre leadership performance. The other 80% add another layer of process.

Pick the feedback you've been avoiding. The one that makes your stomach tight. Schedule the 1-on-1. Lead with care. Challenge directly. Give them 30 days. Track it.

Wrong metric: "How many processes did I roll out this quarter?"

Right metric: "How many underperforming leaders did I address this quarter?"

Organizations optimize what they measure. If you're only measuring process changes, you'll keep installing new systems while the leadership gaps remain.

Manager quality correlates with up to 70% of engagement variance (Gallup), yet most organizations evaluate managers on output—revenue, delivery, efficiency—rather than team health.

You optimize output. For a quarter. Then your best people leave and output collapses.

Next quarter, track these:

If you can't measure team health as closely as revenue, you're flying blind. Revenue is a lagging indicator of team health anyway.

Here's your action plan for the next five days:

Monday morning: Run the Variance Test on your three biggest operational problems. Map them to leaders. If you see clustering, you have your answer.

Monday afternoon: Run the Five-Second Accountability Test. Set a timer for each problem. Name the owner. If you can't, or if you name multiple people, schedule a meeting to assign clear ownership by end of week.

Tuesday: Pick one "process problem" from your improvement backlog. Rewrite it as a people problem. Example: "Our deployment process is broken" becomes "Marcus doesn't trust QA and Sarah won't give him feedback." Decide if you have the courage to address it.

Wednesday: Ask three frontline people: "What's the operational problem you wish I knew about but haven't told me?" Listen. Don't defend. Thank them. Track response time: How many days until you act on what they tell you?

Thursday: Schedule the 1-on-1 you've been avoiding. The underperformer you've been hoping will magically improve. Lead with care. Challenge directly. Set clear expectations. Give them 30 days. Document it.

Friday: Add one new metric to your quarterly dashboard: "Leadership conversations held." Track it as closely as you track revenue. Review it in your next staff meeting.

Your best people are watching. They see you add another tool instead of having the hard conversation. They see problems get reported and ignored. They see you optimize processes while the dysfunction stays untouched.

They're already updating LinkedIn.

Run the tests. Rename the problems. Have the conversation.

Half your operational problems vanish by next Tuesday. The other half? They were never process problems either.