The Profit Leak Blog

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 know because of how information flows up a hierarchy. Every layer between the CEO and the front line filters, softens, and reframes. By the time the picture reaches the top, the friction has been smoothed and the red flags have been reframed as yellow ones. This isn't a character problem. It's a structural one. And it has a measurable cost. Why Filtering Happens Middle managers face a rational set of incentives: Protecting their boss's view of them — "I can handle this" is what gets promoted; "I need help" rarely is. Protecting their team's view of them — escalating problems too quickly signals weakness to the people they lead. Buying time to fix it themselves — "I'll surface it once I have a solution" is a defensible posture. Avoiding the cost of being wrong — escalating a problem that resolves itself is more reputationally expensive than not escalating a problem that gets worse. None of these are dishonest. All of them are filtering. And the filter compounds with every layer. What the Filter Costs The SKOR dataset shows the perception gap between leaders and teams averages 3.8 points on a 0–10 scale. In organizations with more hierarchy, the gap is wider — closer to 5 or 6 points between the CEO and the front line. The cost of that gap shows up in three places: Late problem discovery. Issues that could have been fixed at $50K of cost get fixed at $500K because they surfaced six months later. Wrong-priority investment. The CEO funds initiatives based on the filtered picture, not the actual one. The teams that need investment don't get it; the teams that don't, do. Regrettable departures the CEO doesn't see coming. The top performer's exit interview happened six months earlier — in a 1:1 with their manager that never made it up the chain. How SKOR Breaks the Filter SKOR asks leaders and teams the same questions, separately and in parallel. The data flows from the team to the diagnostic directly — bypassing every layer of softening, reframing, and protective filtering. When the CEO reads the Profit Leak Report, they're reading what the team actually said, not what survived the trip up the org chart. For most CEOs, the first time they read a SKOR report is the first time they've seen unfiltered data from their own teams in years. The reaction is usually some version of: "This is what I suspected, but couldn't prove." The Structural Fix Beyond the diagnostic, the structural fix is to create at least one channel where information flows directly from the team to the top, bypassing the middle layers: Quarterly skip-level conversations — CEO with team leads, no VPs in the room. Diagnostic data shared transparently across all levels — same Profit Leak Number visible to the CEO and the team that generated it. Action commitments published, not just stored — when the leader commits to a 90-day fix, the team that surfaced the problem sees the commitment. None of this replaces middle management. It supplements it with a second channel that the filter can't operate on. How to Find Your Filter Cost The SKOR Diagnostic surfaces the perception gap between every layer of your organization and quantifies the cost as a dollar figure. The teams that close the filter typically recover 30–50% of their Profit Leak in 90 days. Calculate your number

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

A disconnected team is a disengaged team. And disengagement? That's a tax no leader can afford to pay.​ Cohesion is a cure for disengagement. Are you and the leaders in your organization intentionally building and constantly reinforcing cohesion? When employees feel like they’re working toward something meaningful together, engagement skyrockets—and so do results. Cohesion happens when people feel aligned, valued, and invested in a shared vision and mission. When teams lack cohesion, employees feel isolated, misaligned, or undervalued, and their enthusiasm for work diminishes. Silos form, collaboration suffers, and the organization's overall energy declines–disengagement has arrived. This isn't just a cultural issue—it's a performance problem.​ The Hidden Cost of Disconnection Cohesion differentiates a high-performing team from one that merely coexists. According to Gallup's 2024 report, only 77% of employees worldwide are not engaged in their work. This lack of engagement leads to decreased productivity and increased turnover. When teams lack cohesion, the cracks start to show in performance, culture, and retention. At its core, cohesion starts with shared values—but when those values aren’t clearly defined or reinforced, alignment crumbles. Here’s what that looks like: Silos & Poor Communication: Teams operate in isolation, hoarding information instead of collaborating. Without a shared foundation of core values, departments prioritize their own goals over the greater mission, reducing innovation and efficiency. Low Trust & High Turnover: Employees who don’t feel connected to their team or the organization’s values struggle to find purpose in their work. The result? A revolving door of talent as people leave in search of a workplace where they feel they truly belong. Missed Opportunities & Stagnation: When people aren’t aligned around a strong cultural foundation, engagement plummets. Employees hesitate to contribute new ideas or take initiative because they don’t see how their work ties back to something bigger. Cohesion doesn’t happen by chance—it’s built through deliberate leadership, clearly defined values, and a workplace culture that reinforces them every day. The SKOR Solution: Building Cohesion Strong leaders don’t wait for cohesion to happen—they cultivate it. By leveraging SKOR to measure the cohesion within your organization, you can create an environment where employees feel connected, motivated, and engaged. Here’s how: Establish a Shared Purpose: Employees need to see how their work connects to the bigger picture. Align teams around a mission that inspires action. Foster Trust & Recognition: People who feel valued work harder and stay longer. Recognize contributions that align with core values as a way to reinforce ideal behaviors. Break Down Silos: Promote open communication across departments. Cohesive teams innovate faster and solve problems better. Cohesion isn’t just about making people feel good—it’s about driving real business results. When employees feel part of a united team, engagement skyrockets, productivity soars, and the Disengagement Tax starts to decline. Don’t let disconnection derail your business and increase your share of the Disengagement Tax. Strengthen team cohesion and start reclaiming lost potential today. Next week, we’ll explore how Clarity—the second C of SKOR—reduces uncertainty, aligns efforts, and empowers employees to take ownership of their work.

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 easy. Set the expectation. Measure the outcome. Hold the line. That's not what the data shows. And it's not what accountability actually is. Why Most Leaders Get It Wrong Ask a hundred leaders to define accountability and 80 will say some version of "holding people responsible." The implication is consequences — performance plans, hard conversations, exits. In gym terms, that's a one-rep max attempted after six months of inactivity. It's the heaviest possible lift, with the weakest possible preparation, in front of an audience. It rarely ends well — and even when it does, it doesn't build anything sustainable. Strong accountability isn't the willingness to deliver consequences. It's the daily structure that makes consequences almost never necessary. Three reps build that structure. Run them in this order. Fix #1: Install a Daily After Action Review (AAR) The single highest-leverage rep in the dataset. 10 minutes at the end of every day, sprint, or major project. The structure is three questions: What did we ship today? What didn't work? What will we change tomorrow? That's it. No deck. No template. No project management software. The discipline is the mechanism. Drew Trautman, CEO of a 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise, installed daily AARs after his SKOR Diagnostic surfaced Accountability as his biggest blind spot. His bottom line improved 10 points in 12 months. In his words: "Those two things immediately had an impact to move the performance of our business." You'll know Fix #1 is working when team members start surfacing problems before you ask about them. Fix #2: Write Definition-of-Done Agreements For every meaningful deliverable, a one-line written agreement: "This is done when X happens, by Y date, validated by Z." — The definition-of-done format Not a project plan. Not a Notion doc. A contract. Captured in the 1:1 it was discussed in. Reviewed in the next 1:1. That's it. This is the squat of accountability training — unglamorous, foundational, builds everything else. It eliminates the most common cause of weak accountability in the dataset: ambiguous expectations dressed up as collaborative discussions. In teams without definition-of-done agreements, leaders and team members walk out of conversations believing different things about what was decided. By the next check-in, both parties feel disappointed, and neither can articulate why. You'll know Fix #2 is working when status updates get shorter and disagreements about "what was actually agreed" disappear. Fix #3: Replace Annual Reviews with Weekly Performance Contracts The largest perception gap in the SKOR dataset — 4 full points — sits on one question: "How often do you have meaningful performance conversations with each team member?" Leaders rate it at 8.5. Teams rate it at 4.5. The fix isn't another annual review. It's a standing weekly 1:1 with a fixed structure: 25 minutes. Same time every week. Not optional. Three questions: What did you ship? What's blocking you? What does success look like in the next two weeks? Written record. Team member captures the answers. Leader reviews before the next 1:1. This is the mechanism that converts a conversation into a contract. It's also the only way to close the 4-point gap at the scale that matters — every team member, every week. You'll know Fix #3 is working when top performers stop quietly updating their LinkedIn profiles. The Order Matters Install the three fixes in order. AARs first — they create the daily rhythm. Definition-of-done agreements second — they install the contract format. Weekly performance contracts third — they extend the contract format into the 1:1 conversation. Trying to install all three at once is the most common failure pattern. The team gets overwhelmed, none of the practices land, and the leader concludes "accountability training doesn't work." It does — but only in the right order, with one rep installed at a time. How to Find Your Score The SKOR Diagnostic measures Accountability across role clarity, expectations, ownership, and feedback. It compares leader scores against team scores and surfaces the gap as a dollar figure. If your team is in the 73% — and the math says they probably are — your Profit Leak Number is sitting on this muscle. The good news: it responds quickly to the right training. Calculate your number: getskor.com/profitleakcalc

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 necessary change." — Michael Dell Michael Dell says if you don't have a crisis, make one. The $7.5M leak in your business is the crisis you didn't know you had — until you measured it. How $7.5M Adds Up SKOR's data across hundreds of organizations puts the average Profit Leak at $30,000 per employee per year. Three components: $18K per employee in productivity loss — Gallup's data shows 56% of workers don't clearly know what's expected of them. The drag on productive output is 18%. $8K per employee in preventable turnover — SHRM puts replacement cost at 1.5–2x annual salary. The factors driving turnover aren't compensation; they're the SKOR muscles. $4K per employee in misalignment and blind spots — the perception gap between leaders and teams creates $4K of compounding waste per person. At 250 employees, that's $7.5M a year. At 500, $15M. At 1,000, $30M. Every year. Recurring. Why the Number Is Invisible Three measurement systems run in parallel inside most mid-market companies: Finance measures what hits the ledger. Profit leak doesn't hit the ledger; it leaks before it gets there. Operations measures what hits the dashboard. Profit leak doesn't show up on the dashboard; it shows up as "weird quarter" or "underperforming team." People measures sentiment. Profit leak isn't a sentiment; it's a behavioral gap with a dollar figure attached. The number lives in the seam between these three systems. SKOR exists to measure the seam. What 30% Recovery Looks Like in 90 Days Teams that run the diagnostic and act on the top three priorities recover 30–50% of their Profit Leak in the first phase. At 250 employees, that's $2.25M–$3.75M back inside one quarter. The mechanism isn't complicated. The diagnostic surfaces the three highest-leverage gaps. Leaders pick two and act on them with a 90-day cadence. The behavioral change shows up in productivity, retention, and revenue per employee. It's not a 6-month transformation. It's the inverse: stop doing what's leaking and the leak slows. How to Find Your Number The Profit Leak Calculator gives you a low-high estimate based on headcount and average compensation. It takes 90 seconds. It's free. The full diagnostic gives you the exact figure broken down across the 7 Muscles, with a prioritized roadmap. Not a feeling. Not a score you file away. A Profit Leak Number you act on. Calculate your number: getskor.com/profitleakcalc

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 long before the email was sent. The leading indicator was on the SKOR Diagnostic six months earlier, sitting on a 2.4-point Recognition gap nobody was watching. The Gap Top Performers Feel First Across 3,523 leaders in the SKOR dataset, Recognition produces a consistent perception gap. Leaders rate themselves at 9.6. Teams rate them at 7.6. That gap is felt unevenly. Average performers feel it as background noise. Top performers feel it as a signal. Top performers are doing the work most worth recognizing — the customer save, the Q4 close, the system that didn't break because they fixed it before anyone noticed. The acknowledgement they receive doesn't match the effort they put in. Over time, the math becomes obvious to them: this place doesn't see what I do. Once that math is settled, they start running their own diagnostic — on the open market. What One Regrettable Departure Costs SHRM puts replacement cost at 1.5–2x annual salary. For a $100K role, that's $150K–$200K. The number includes: Recruiting fees and search time. Onboarding ramp — typically 6–9 months to productivity. Lost institutional knowledge — decisions, relationships, customer history that walks out the door. Productivity drag on the remaining team while the role is open. Reputational signal to the rest of the team — "if they're leaving, what do they know that I don't?" That's one departure. Most teams have two or three regrettable departures a year they could have prevented if they'd been watching the leading indicator. Two Practices That Close the Recognition Gap Recognition isn't an annual awards program. It's a weekly behavior. Two practices correlate most strongly with closing the 2.4-point gap: Specific, written, weekly. Generic praise ("great job team!") doesn't move the gap. Specific written acknowledgement ("the way you handled the customer escalation on Tuesday — naming the issue, owning the fix, closing the loop in writing — that's the standard") closes it. Weekly. By name. From the leader. Public, in front of peers. Recognition delivered privately doesn't carry the same signal as recognition delivered in a team forum. Top performers want their work seen by the people whose opinion they value most — their peers. Both practices take under 15 minutes a week. Both reduce regrettable turnover within a quarter. Both are free. How to Find the Gap Before the Resignation The SKOR Diagnostic measures Recognition across leader and team scores, surfaces the gap, and quantifies the retention cost. Teams that act on the gap before it produces a departure save the $150K–$200K replacement cost — per top performer, per year. By the time the resignation lands, the math is already settled. Catch it earlier. Calculate your number on our website.

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 consistent: Leaders rate team performance 3+ points higher than their teams do. Nearly Every time. We call this the blind spot. And across 3,523 leaders assessed, the average perception gap is 3.8 points on a 0–10 scale. Where the Gaps Hide Performance & Goals: Leaders rate regular performance discussions at 8.5. Teams rate them at 4.5. That’s a 4-point gap on the single most important driver of commitment. Leaders believe these conversations are happening. Teams say they’re not — or that they lack substance. Recognition: Leaders rate recognition at 9.6. Teams rate it at 7.6. Leaders think they’re celebrating wins. Teams feel overlooked. This gap is why top performers start quietly updating their resumes. Role Clarity: Leaders rate role understanding at 9.5. Teams rate it at 6.6. Leaders assume everyone knows what they’re responsible for. Teams are confused about priorities, duplicating effort, and wasting time. Why Leaders Don’t See It This isn’t about bad leadership. It’s about structural asymmetry. Leaders have more context — they know the strategy, the reasoning, the constraints. They assume their teams have the same visibility. They don’t. Leaders also receive filtered information. People are less likely to share negative feedback upward. The daily friction, the quiet frustration, the slow disengagement — it stays invisible. Engagement surveys don’t solve this because they measure sentiment, not the specific perception gap between leaders and teams. They give you a temperature reading. They don’t show you where the thermostat is broken. What the Gap Costs When leaders think performance discussions are happening but teams say they’re not, priorities drift and effort gets wasted. Gallup shows 56% of employees don’t clearly know what’s expected — creating an 18% productivity drag. When leaders think recognition is strong but teams feel invisible, engagement drops. When roles are unclear, work gets duplicated and people spend 3–7 hours per week on the wrong things. Add it up and the average organization is losing $30K per employee per year. For a 100-person company, that’s $3M. The One Question That Reveals It "How often do you have meaningful conversations with each team member about their performance goals?" Ask your leaders. Then ask their teams. Compare the answers. If there’s a gap of 2 or more points, you have a blind spot that’s costing you real money. SKOR does this systematically across 13 matched question pairs, calculates the dollar figure for every gap, and gives you a prioritized roadmap to close them. What to Do About It The first step is acknowledging the gap exists. The second is measuring it. The third is acting — not with a 6-month initiative, but with 2–3 focused actions over 90 days. Drew Trautman, CEO of a 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise, saw this firsthand. His SKOR was 70 — above average. But the accountability blind spot was costing him real money. After implementing one-on-one feedback and daily After Action Reviews, his bottom line improved by 10 points. In his words: "10 points is a huge amount of leaking profit that we didn’t have to leak for all those years." Teams that address their biggest blind spots typically recover 30–50% of their Profit Leak in the first phase. Not a feeling. Not a score you file away. A Profit Leak Number you act on. Calculate your team’s Profit Leak

We just got back from CultureCon West, and we're still buzzing. Claude Silver of Vayner Media delivered an impactful keynote after just releasing her new book, Be Yourself at Work: The Groundbreaking Power of Showing Up, Standing Out, and Leading from the Heart. Listening to her speak about growth mindset, authenticity, and the courage to be in a constant state of evolution hit differently. Not because these were brand new concepts, but because they reinforced everything we already believe about how culture is built. The core message? Being in a growth area at work means you're not going to be the same person throughout the role. Change isn't something to resist—it's an invitation to evolve, to learn, and to step into the unknown with curiosity rather than fear. That resonated deeply because it's exactly what we've been working toward: creating an environment where people don't just do work; they grow through work. But here's the thing about inspiration—it has a shelf life. The real magic happens when we move from knowing to doing. This week, we're asking ourselves: How do we take these principles off the stage (and the page) and into practice? The Gap Between Learning and Living It's easy to nod along when someone talks about embracing change or practicing radical transparency. It's another thing entirely when you're in the middle of a project pivot, a tough conversation with a teammate, or a moment where vulnerability feels risky. That gap—between what we know we should do and what we actually do—is where growth either happens or stalls. Putting Principles into Practice Here's what we're learning by turning the concepts we've been focusing on into actual daily practices. Growth Mindset in Action Instead of treating challenges as problems to hide or fix alone, we're reframing them as opportunities to learn and improve together. When we hit a roadblock on a client deliverable, rather than scrambling privately to fix it, we approach it with curiosity: "What can we learn here? Who might see this differently?" The result? Team members jump in with perspectives no one has considered, and the problem was solved faster, together. A growth mindset isn't just about staying positive—it's about believing that obstacles are invitations to get better, and that your team's collective learning beats individual perfection every time. Accountability Without Defensiveness We missed a deadline. It happens. But instead of the usual dance of excuses or finger-pointing, we tried something different: owning it cleanly and moving straight to "here's how we prevent this next time." No drama, no defensiveness, just responsibility. Turns out, accountability feels lighter when you stop making it personal. Adaptability as a Daily Practice Adaptability isn't just for big, dramatic pivots. It could and should be practiced in small ways: adjusting meeting agendas on the fly when priorities shift, reworking a strategy mid-week based on new data, saying "let's try a different approach" without attachment to the original plan. Each small adaptation builds the muscle for the bigger ones. The Team Element: Growing Together, Not Just Side-by-Side Growth doesn't happen in isolation. Your team isn't just a collection of individuals working in parallel; you're a system, and when one person grows, it creates space for everyone else to level up too. For example, when one team member starts asking better questions in meetings—suddenly, everyone's contributions get sharper. When one person practices vulnerability by admitting they don’t understand a concept, it gives permission for others to do the same. Growth is contagious, but only if you're doing it out loud, together. When Change Feels More Like Chaos Than An Opportunity Let's be honest, embracing change as an opportunity sounds great in theory. But sometimes, change can show up messy. A key strategy gets disrupted by external factors. A team member has to step back unexpectedly. Plans shift. Here's what we're learning, though: change doesn't always feel like opportunity in the moment. Sometimes it just feels like chaos. The practice isn't about forcing yourself to feel positive about every curveball—it's about staying steady enough to respond thoughtfully instead of reactively. It's about asking "what's possible here?" even when you'd rather just complain. Small Moves, Big Momentum You don't overhaul your entire way of working in a week. Growth happens in the small, consistent choices: Choosing to speak up in a meeting instead of staying silent. Asking "how can I help?" instead of waiting to be asked. Admitting what you don't know instead of pretending. Adjusting course without making it a whole thing. Celebrating someone else's win as genuinely as your own. This week, focus on making one or two of these moves each day. Not perfectly, not dramatically—just consistently. And the cumulative effect? Things will feel different. Lighter. More collaborative. More honest. The Real Truth About Growth Here's something that keeps coming back to us: growth isn't comfortable, and that’s how you know you’re doing it right. Being in a culture where you're encouraged to grow means accepting that you won't be the same person throughout your role—and that's exactly the point. If you're comfortable, you're probably not growing—you're maintaining. Maintenance is fine for certain seasons, but it's not where innovation lives, where breakthroughs happen, or where you build the kind of culture that actually attracts and keeps great people. Claude Silver’s book reminds us that showing up authentically means showing up in your uncertainty, your learning, your evolution. It means leading from the heart even when—especially when—you don't have all the answers. Every work environment has uncomfortable moments. Conversations that feel risky. Decisions that feel uncertain. Admissions that feel exposing. But on the other side of each uncomfortable moment? A little more trust, a little more clarity, a little more connection. What We're Carrying Forward As we close out this week, we're not claiming we've mastered anything. But we have created some new patterns: Trust the team first. When challenges arise, bring them to the table immediately. Your team's collective intelligence beats your solo scrambling every time. Own it and move on. Accountability doesn't require a performance. State it, solve it, prevent it. Next. Adapt in real-time. Don't wait for permission or perfection. Make the adjustment, communicate it, keep moving. Grow out loud. Your learning creates space for everyone else's learning. Be the one who asks the "dumb" question, admits the mistake, tries the new thing. Your Turn We're curious: What's one small move you could make this week to close the gap between knowing and doing? Maybe it's speaking up about something that's bothering you. Maybe it's admitting you need help. Maybe it's trying a different approach to something you've been doing the same way for months. Growth doesn't require grand gestures. It requires showing up a little braver, a little more honest, a little more adaptable than you did yesterday. And if you're building a team or a culture, remember: the best thing you can do is model the behavior you want to see. Don't just talk about transparency—be transparent. Don't just value accountability—demonstrate it. Don't just celebrate adaptability—practice it. From insight to impact. That's the move.

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." The engagement surveys gave him data — but not the right data. They told him how people felt. They didn’t tell him where the team dynamics were breaking down, what the gap was between leadership’s perception and the team’s reality, or what any of it was costing the business. So Drew tried something different. He ran SKOR’s Profit Leak Diagnostic. What the Diagnostic Found Drew’s SKOR came back at 70 out of 100 — 10 points above the industry average in transportation and logistics. By most measures, a strong result. But the diagnostic revealed something beneath the surface that engagement surveys had never surfaced. The biggest blind spot was accountability. Leaders believed expectations were clear, performance conversations were happening, and the team understood what was expected. The team’s data told a different story. There was a meaningful perception gap between what leadership thought was happening and what people were actually experiencing. Why Engagement Surveys Missed It Drew had been running engagement surveys for years. They were useful — but limited. "We’d done employee engagement surveys twice a year through our franchisor for quite some time. Sometimes we’d get it right and sometimes we’d get it wrong." Engagement surveys measure sentiment — how people feel at a point in time. They don’t measure the behavioral dynamics that drive performance. They don’t score leaders and teams separately. And they don’t put a dollar figure on the gaps. SKOR does all three. Drew noticed the difference immediately: "What I liked was it directly tied to the data, actionable and that spoke to me from a simplicity standpoint and something that my team would embrace. It wasn’t an overwhelming amount of information and they nailed it. It’s been awesome." What They Did About It The Diagnostic Report came with a prioritized roadmap. Two immediate actions stood out: More one-on-one feedback. Regular, structured conversations between leaders and team members about performance, goals, and expectations. Not annual reviews — consistent, ongoing dialogue. Daily After-Action Reviews (AARs). A brief daily debrief on what worked, what didn’t, and what to adjust. This created a rhythm of accountability that didn’t feel like micromanagement — it felt like learning. "Those two things immediately had an impact to move the performance of our business." But the changes went deeper than process improvements. The SKOR data made it clear who was committed and who wasn’t: "Once we really looked at SKOR and how the teams were functioning and the lack of accountability between teams, it started to become clear and apparent who really wanted to be a part of this team to make it grow and who didn’t. Because of SKOR we made some changes and we have been in a much better place since." The Results The impact showed up where it matters most: the bottom line. "To calculate the benefit of SKOR, we’ve improved our bottom line in the last year, about 10 points, significant money. 10 points is a huge amount of leaking profit that we didn’t have to leak for all those years." Think about that last line. "All those years." Drew didn’t have a broken team. He had invisible gaps that had been leaking profit for years — gaps that engagement surveys couldn’t surface because they weren’t designed to look for them. Drew’s Advice "Any leader considering SKOR, I tell them to do it now. I wish I had done it years ago." That sentence captures what makes a Profit Leak Diagnostic different from an engagement survey. Engagement surveys tell you what already happened. SKOR tells you what’s been happening all along — the profit that’s been leaking while you were looking at the wrong data. What This Means for You Drew’s franchise wasn’t failing. It was above average. But “above average” doesn’t mean “no blind spots.” The accountability gap was real, measurable, and expensive — and it was invisible until SKOR surfaced it. The average organization is losing $30K per employee per year. The question isn’t whether your teams have blind spots. They do. The question is how big they are, what they’re costing you, and how long you’ve been leaking profit without knowing it. Learn more about Drew's story here. Not a feeling. Not a score you file away. A Profit Leak Number you act on.

Every company has a line item for compensation. For benefits. For office leases, software licenses, travel budgets, and coffee subscriptions. But there’s a cost that dwarfs most of those line items and appears nowhere on the P&L: The profit leaking from how teams work together. Research from Gallup, McKinsey, SHRM, and Harvard Business Review consistently shows that companies lose 15–20% of payroll to team dysfunction. Not to bad strategy, bad products, or bad markets — to misalignment, avoided conversations, unclear expectations, and the gap between what leaders think is happening and what teams actually experience. SKOR’s own data across hundreds of organizations confirms it. The average Profit Leak: $30K per employee, per year. Here’s where it comes from. $18K: Productivity Loss Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace data shows that 56% of employees don’t clearly understand what’s expected of them, and disengagement creates an 18% productivity drag. That’s not people being lazy — it’s people working hard on the wrong things because nobody told them what matters. SKOR measures this through questions about role clarity, goal alignment, meeting effectiveness, and process efficiency. When teams score low on these dimensions, the cost shows up as rework, duplicated effort, missed deadlines, and hours spent in meetings that produce no clear next steps. At an average compensation of $100K, an 18% productivity drag on 56% of employees translates to roughly $18K per person per year in recoverable productivity loss. $8K: Preventable Turnover SHRM research shows that replacing an employee costs 1.5–2x their annual salary. And the primary drivers of voluntary turnover aren’t compensation — they’re the factors SKOR measures: lack of recognition, poor feedback, unclear goals, and feeling disconnected from leadership. Organizations with transparent leadership see 30% lower turnover. When that transparency is missing — when leaders don’t share results, don’t communicate honestly about setbacks, and don’t keep teams informed — people leave. Each departure costs $100K–$200K when you factor in recruiting, onboarding, lost institutional knowledge, and the productivity dip of the remaining team. Across a typical organization with 10% annual turnover, the preventable portion costs roughly $8K per employee per year when spread across the entire headcount. $4K: Misalignment & Blind Spots The remaining $4K per employee comes from the subtlest source: the perception gap between leaders and their teams. When leaders rate recognition at 10.0 and teams rate it at 7.6, that 2.4-point gap means leaders are making decisions based on a reality that doesn’t match what their people experience. They’re investing in the wrong priorities, missing early warning signs, and creating friction they don’t know exists. McKinsey’s research shows that misaligned teams lose 20–30% of productive capacity. SKOR’s data confirms it: teams with large blind spots consistently show higher wasted hours, lower goal clarity, and higher turnover indicators. What $30K Looks Like at Scale 50 employees: $1.5M per year. Bigger than most companies’ marketing budgets. 250 employees: $7.5M per year. A new product line or a market expansion — gone every year. 500 employees: $15M per year. Enough to change a company’s trajectory. 1,000 employees: $30M per year. A line item nobody’s accounting for. Why Nobody Budgets for It Nobody has measured it. Engagement surveys don’t quantify it. Performance reviews don’t catch it. Financial reports don’t show it. The $30K Problem Nobody Budgets For. That’s why we built SKOR. Not another survey. A Profit Leak Diagnostic that puts a dollar figure on what your teams are costing you — broken down by 7 behavioral drivers, with a prioritized roadmap to start recovering it. See where your $30K is hiding: getskor.com/profitleakcalc