What the Top 10% Do in 90 Days. (Hint: Less, Not More.)

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 Leak. The bottom 90% do the

opposite — they prescribe themselves a six-month transformation, change their diet, start a new exercise plan, redesign the kitchen, and book the surgery for "sometime next quarter."

"When you're a CEO, you only have two things: you got time and you got capital. How you deploy that time and how you deploy that capital will equal your results."

—Brad Jacobs, founder of 8 billion-dollar companies

Brad Jacobs is right about the two assets. SKOR measures the third: the team friction that

silently destroys both. Capital wasted on the wrong priorities. Time wasted on the wrong

initiatives. The top 10% protect both by doing less, on purpose.

Action 1: Diagnose. Then Cut

A surgeon doesn't operate on every organ that looks suboptimal. They operate on the one causing the most damage.

The Profit Leak Report ranks the seven muscles by dollar impact. Most leaders see seven

things to fix. The top 10% see two.

"Do one thing and do it better than anyone else. Don't try to be all things to all people or you're going to be nothing to anybody."

— Todd Graves, founder of Raising Cane's

Graves built a multi-billion-dollar restaurant chain by refusing to add menu items. The top 10% of SKOR teams apply the same discipline to their Profit Leak recovery: pick two, ignore the rest.

Action 2: One Procedure Per Muscle. Weekly Recovery.

For each of the two muscles, the team commits to one new practice. One. Not a new

framework, not a new tool — one repeatable behavior, run weekly, untouched.

Examples from the dataset:

• Accountability — daily after Action Review, 10 minutes.

• Recognition — weekly written acknowledgement, by name, by leader.

• Goals & Rewards — bi-weekly performance conversation, three-question structure.

• Transparency — monthly all-hands with results shared honestly, including misses.

The practice runs for 90 days untouched. No tweaks. No additions. The discipline is the mechanism.

Action 3: The 30-Day Follow up. Non-Negotiable.

Every surgery has a 30-day post-op check. Not to redo the surgery — to confirm recovery is on track.

At day 30, the team takes a 5-question pulse on the two muscles. Not a full diagnostic — a check on whether the new practice is showing up in behavior and whether the perception gap is closing.

Most teams skip this step. The top 10% never do. The pulse is what converts a 90-day initiative into a permanent muscle.

The Four Traps That Derail Everyone Else

• Picking five priorities instead of two. Five priorities is no priority. The surgeon who

  operates on every organ kills the patient.

• Adding a new system before fixing the behaviour. Tools amplify behavior; they don't

  replace it.

• Outsourcing it to HR or to a consultant. The leader has to own the cadence. Delegated, it dies.

• Measuring at 90 days only. By then, the practice has either become a muscle or been

  quietly dropped. The 30-day pulse is the post-op visit.

  
  

How to Run the Cadence

SKOR provides the diagnostic, the prioritization, the 30-day pulse, and the partner support to keep the cadence in place. The leader provides the discipline.

Book a 15-minute call: getskor.com/contact