The Profit Leak Blog

What training for a half marathon with newborn twins taught a working mom about the muscles high-performing teams use when there's no extra time. After I had my twins, I wanted to get back in shape and feel like myself again. So I signed up for a half marathon. 13.1 miles. Click to watch the video At the time, I was a three-to-five-mile runner. On a good day. My goal wasn't a fast time. It was simple: cross the finish line without walking. I knew where I was starting. I knew

Most leaders defend a bad call. Here's what happens when one doesn't. Three words, said out loud, at a podium, in front of the media and everyone who follows the team. Not by a player. By the head coach, about his own decision. Most leaders never say that sentence about themselves — they say it about the market, the timing, someone on their team. Aaron Glenn said it about a call only he had made, and then he did something rarer still: he reversed it, in public, and staked his

What a late night 4-hour delay taught me about the seven muscles that separate high-performing teams from everyone else. At 6pm, the first redeye home got cancelled. Not delayed — cancelled. Scrambled to rebook on another airline for an 11pm flight instead. Felt like a win. That didn't last. At 8pm, a text: pushed to 2:40am. An hour later, another text: pushed again, to 3:45am. Anyone who has spent a night like that in an airport knows what usually happens next. People get na

It's back-to-school season. Somewhere between graduation and the first job, learning quietly became optional, unmeasured, and self-funded. Nobody decided that. It's costing more than anyone has calculated. Nobody questions the September machine Right now millions of parents are buying backpacks, checking supply lists, and taking first-day photos on the porch. Nobody asks whether it's worth it. Nobody demands the ROI on a fourth-grade curriculum. We spend thirteen years and an

Guest Post by Michael Perrino, SKOR's summer intern and junior at Lehigh University What a summer inside SKOR taught one intern about the most expensive problem in business: it's the same one that costs teams championships. A few weeks into my internship, I sat in on a client meeting and watched a business owner see his Profit Leak Number for the first time. It was in the millions. The room went quiet in that specific way rooms go quiet when something abstract suddenly become

I started 7 companies. 3 of them failed. It all led me to this. Last week SKOR turned 3. The honest story of why it exists starts long before that.

Every layer of hierarchy filters bad news. By the time it reaches the top, the picture is unrecognizable — and the gap is structural, not personal. There's a moment every CEO has lived. The quarterly review goes fine. The VPs report "a few headwinds but tracking." The board materials show momentum. Then a top performer resigns, a customer churns unexpectedly, or a project that was "on track" misses by six weeks. The CEO's first thought: "How did I not know this?" They didn't

Most leaders treat profit leak with a six-month wellness program. The top 10% treat it like surgery — targeted, recovered from, followed up on a precise schedule. When a doctor identifies a serious medical problem, they don't open with a generalized lifestyle overhaul. They identify the precise issue, schedule a focused intervention, manage the recovery on a defined timeline, and confirm the fix with a follow-up. That's exactly what the top 10% of teams do with their Profit L

Accountability isn't consequences. It's the muscle nobody trains — and these are the three reps that build it fastest, in the order to install them. Of the seven muscles SKOR measures — Accountability, Transparency, Healthy Conflict, Growth Mindset, Adaptability, Recognition, and Goals & Rewards — Accountability shows up as the lowest score across 73% of teams in the dataset. That number surprises most leaders. They expect Healthy Conflict or Recognition. Accountability seems

Walk into any 250-person company in the country. Pull the P&L. The largest line items will be people: payroll, benefits, payroll taxes. Roughly $25M at average compensation. Now ask the CFO: "What's our second-largest people cost?" They'll cite recruiting, retention, training, technology. They will not cite the answer that matters most: $7.5M leaking out of how teams work together. "If you don't have a crisis, make one. You get people excited, motivated, and drive the necessa

Every leader has had the conversation. The high performer walks into the office, hands over the resignation, and the leader's first thought is: "I didn't see this coming." They didn't see it coming because they were watching the wrong indicator. The resignation is the lagging indicator. By the time it lands, the top performer has been mentally gone for an average of six months — talking to recruiters, updating their LinkedIn, taking calls during lunch. The decision was made l

Every leader believes they’re doing a good job. Most of them are right — partially. But there’s a gap between what leaders think is happening on their teams and what their teams actually experience. And that gap has a cost. At SKOR, we measure this gap directly. Leaders and Individual Contributors answer matched questions about the same team dynamics — recognition, goals, feedback quality, communication, accountability. When we compare the answers, the pattern is remarkably c