The Operating Week: One Habit to Change, One Article to Read, One Pod to Listen to, One Video to Watch
A weekly series to jumpstart your operating week form Operating by John Brewton
Most operators I talk to have a growth problem.
Not the kind they think they have.
They don’t lack ambition. They don’t lack ideas.
They lack the right scoreboard.
They’re tracking what was easy to measure one year ago and wondering why the number goes up but nothing moves.
That’s not a strategy. That’s a habit dressed up as one.
This week: one habit, one article, one podcast, one video, and three people worth following. All connected by one idea. The gap between wanting growth and building the systems that produce it.
Let’s go.
- j -
We sold out 100 Operating Founder seats in two weeks.
Then we opened 100 more. Half are already gone.
Every Friday I host a 60-minute live Zoom for Operating Founders: behind the scenes of everything I’m building, live content tutorials, real performance data walked through in real time, every template I use, and 20 minutes of open Q&A on building your creator business.
52 live sessions. Real data. Real templates. $99 for the year.
The offer closes February 28th or when the remaining seats fill.
One Habit to Add This Week
The 15-Minute KPI Audit.
Block 15 minutes. Open whatever you use to track your business.
Write down every metric you look at regularly.
Follower count. Revenue. Hours billed. Pipeline value. Open rates.
Circle those that actually changed a decision in the last 30 days.
If you’re honest with yourself, the list gets short fast.
The rest are legacy metrics.
They made sense when you started them. They don’t anymore.
Kill one this week. Replace it with something that reflects where you’re going, not where you’ve been. If you’re a solo consultant, maybe “hours billed” becomes “revenue per client.” If you’re building a services firm, maybe “proposals sent” becomes “close rate by channel.”
You can’t run a new business on an old scoreboard.
Paid subscribers: I built you a KPI Audit one-sheeter to run this exercise in 15 minutes flat. Become a paid subscriber and access here.
We sold out 100 Operating Founder seats in two weeks. Then we opened 100 more. Half are already gone.
Every Friday I host a 60-minute live Zoom for Operating Founders: behind the scenes of everything I’m building, live content, strategy and business model tutorials, real performance data walked through in real time, every template I use, and 20 minutes of open Q&A on building your creator business.
52 live sessions. Real data. Real templates. Real Operating Strategies.
$99 for the year.
The offer closes February 28th or when the remaining seats fill. Once they’re gone, the Founder tier goes away entirely.
One Article to Read
“Are Legacy Metrics Derailing Your Transformation?” by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, Harvard Business Review
Nieto-Rodriguez argues we’re in a “transformation age” where strategy executes through dynamic initiatives, not static plans. The problem? Most companies still measure performance with KPIs built for the old model.
This was written for big organizations. But the principle scales down beautifully. You have legacy metrics too. The follower number that feels productive but doesn’t correlate with revenue. The invoice count you track because you always have. The transformation age isn’t just for Fortune 500s. It’s for anyone whose business should look different next year than it does today.
One Podcast to Listen To
“What Does It Take to Achieve and Sustain Growth?” — The McKinsey Podcast
Here’s a stat that should bother you: 72% of leaders say they want to run a growth company. Only 22% have actually allocated the resources to support it.
That’s from McKinsey’s latest research. Senior Partners Greg Kelly and Jill Zucker break down the execution gap. Companies treat cost-cutting with surgical discipline. Systems, weekly tracking, ruthless accountability. Growth? They wing it. They hope a basket of initiatives will deliver in aggregate. They don’t build feedback loops. They don’t re-underwrite bets when conditions change.
Sound familiar? This is exactly what happens at one person and ten people, not just ten thousand. You run tight on expenses and loose on growth. You have a spreadsheet for costs and a vague feeling about revenue.
This episode will challenge you to put the same rigor around growth that you already put around not going broke.
One Video to Watch
“How to Crack the New LinkedIn Algorithm in 19 Minutes” — Chris Donnelly
If you’re building a consulting or services business and you’re not treating LinkedIn like a growth system, you’re leaving money on the table. Chris Donnelly built a $10M business with no sales team and no paid ads.
In this video, he breaks down the current algorithm: why saves matter more than likes, how your first 90 minutes after posting determine reach, and why the platform is still starving for quality content. Practical, data-driven, no fluff.
Paid subscribers get my full breakdown [here→] — detailed personal notes on everything Chris shared. And here's a bonus: a senior member of Chris's team is joining our next Operating Founder Live Zoom to go deeper on the strategy above. Become an Operating Founder today so you don't miss it
Three People to Follow
Amy C. Edmondson — Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. Her work on psychological safety and the science of failing well is referenced in the research behind this week’s article. If you’re a small operator afraid to kill a metric or abandon a strategy that isn’t working, her thinking will give you permission to course-correct faster. LinkedIn.
Chris Donnelly — 1M+ LinkedIn followers built on data, systems, and zero gimmicks. If you want to understand how the platform works for business builders, not influencers, he’s the one. LinkedIn.
Jill Zucker — McKinsey Senior Partner focused on growth strategy. Her framing of the gap between growth intent and growth action is something every operator should internalize. LinkedIn.
That’s the week. One habit. Four inputs. Three people.
Build the system. Measure what matters. Go operate.
- john -
150+ creators are building together as Operating Founders. 52 live sessions, real data, every template. $99/year. Your seat’s still open.
Love this framing of “legacy metrics.” The 15-minute KPI audit is such a simple, brutal litmus test for what actually drives decisions versus what just makes us feel busy. Going to steal “you can’t run a new business on an old scoreboard” as a reminder to keep rewiring my own dashboard for where I’m headed, not where I’ve been.
Great line up of ones… they all add up