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

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

How a 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise found — and fixed — the blind spot engagement surveys missed. Drew Trautman is the kind of leader who pays attention. As president of Lions Environmental Services, a 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise based in Northern New Jersey, he’d invested in his team, built a strong culture, and ran engagement surveys twice a year through the franchisor. But something wasn’t adding up. "We realized we were trying to solve the problem by doing more of the same stuff.

Like in the NFL, the teams that succeed in 2026 won't be the ones with the most Pro Bowlers. They'll be the ones where accountability flows in all directions: up, down, and sideways.

Here's what nobody's talking about in their New Year content blitz: Your team doesn't need another motivational keynote, trust fall exercise or happy hour. They need to train the muscles that actually make you money.

This week, we're asking ourselves: How do we take these principles off the stage (and the page) and into practice?

This November, don't give your team another hour. Give them what they actually need to perform at their best.

Don't let your teams become another cautionary tale.

This is the clarity crisis—and it's costing you more than you think.

There's a fundamental problem that plagues even well-intentioned leadership teams: the disconnect between how transparent leaders believe they're managing and what their employees actually experience.

When leaders rely on fear, they don't create accountability—they create compliance that crumbles under pressure and a cycle where the next generation simply replicates the same destructive patterns.

Leadership Can Come from Anywhere We tend to think leadership is the coach’s job. Or the captains. Or the managers. But in reality, leadership is not a title — it’s a behavior.

In the NFL, Dan Campbell has become synonymous with grit, resilience, and culture in Detroit. His “culture guy” identity is...

Data always tells a story. The challenge for leaders is whether we’re listening. One of our recent SKOR assessments revealed two...

In elite sports, accountability isn't optional—it's everything. Every player knows their position, their responsibilities, and their performance metrics. The quarterback knows the play. The receiver knows the route. The defense knows the scheme. Everyone is aligned because the cost of confusion is visible and immediate: a blown play, a missed tackle, a lost game.

Leadership isn’t just about big decisions and bold strategies. It ’s about the small actions — the daily clarity, accountability, and...

Imagine every person on your team was wearing an Apple Watch — not to track their steps or heart rate, but to measure things that...

Most companies invest in manager training with the right intentions. Better communication, stronger leadership, more engaged teams. And that’s a great start. But it’s not enough. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: you can’t improve what you don’t measure.