The Engine, The Engineer, and The Lie
Stop calling yourself “Operations.”
The word implies support. It implies that you exist to clean up the mess made by others. It implies that you are a janitor in a suit, sweeping up the broken glass left behind by a reckless sales team.
If you view yourself this way, you are already dead.
You are not a helper. You are not “back office.”
You are the Chief Engineer.
The modern revenue organization is not a group of people making phone calls. It is a high-performance machine. It is a complex assembly of wetware (humans) and software (the stack) trying to convert potential energy into kinetic output.
That output is Revenue.
But there is a problem.
The machine you have inherited is broken. It is leaking oil. The pistons are misfiring. The transmission is grinding.
Most first-time RevOps leaders look at this smoking wreckage and grab a roll of duct tape. They try to patch the leaks. They try to silence the squeaks. They try to please the drivers.
This is a trap.
If you spend your days fixing what others break, you are not leading. You are subservient to the chaos.
You must stop fixing. You must start building.
Here are the three immutable laws for the first-time Chief Engineer.
I. Do Not Polish The Rust
The first trap is the “Ticket Trap.”
You step into the role. Immediately, you are assaulted. “Fix this Salesforce field.” “Change this HubSpot workflow.” “Get me this report by EOD.”
The drivers (Sales VPs, Marketing Heads) treat you like a pit crew. They want a tire change. They want a windshield wipe. They want to get back on the track and drive fast.
And because you are insecure, because you want to prove your “value,” you say yes.
You fix the field. You build the report. You clean the data.
You have just failed.
By reacting to the noise, you have ignored the structural integrity of the engine. You are polishing rust.
The Hard Truth: A bad process executed perfectly is still a bad process.
You do not need faster repairs. You need a new Schematic.
Your first duty is not to the user requests. It is to the Architecture.
Think of the Revenue Engine as a combustion system. Marketing provides the Fuel (Leads). Sales provides the Spark (Conversion). Customer Success maintains the Pressure (Retention).
If the fuel line is not connected to the combustion chamber, it does not matter how high-quality the fuel is. The engine will not start.
Most organizations have Silos. Marketing has a fuel tank. Sales has a spark plug. They are not connected.
Your job is to build the manifold.
The Audit: Ignore the complaints. Look at the schematic. Does data flow seamlessly from the initial click to the signed contract? Or does it require manual entry?
Manual entry is friction. Friction is heat. Heat destroys engines.
Every time a human has to copy-paste data, your engine loses torque. Every time a lead sits untouched for 4 hours, your fuel evaporates. Every time a handoff fails, you blow a gasket.
Stop looking for quick wins. Sit down. Close the door. Map the entire flow.
If the architecture is flawed, no amount of hard work will save you. You must be ruthless with the design.
If a tool does not fit the schematic, rip it out. If a process generates heat without torque, cut the line.
You are not here to make the drivers comfortable. You are here to make the car fast.
II. The Dashboard Is The Windshield
The second trap is “The Narrative.”
Humans are storytellers. Salespeople are professional storytellers. They will tell you why they missed the number. They will tell you the leads are bad. They will tell you the market is soft. They will tell you the pricing is wrong.
These are hallucinations.
In the Engine Room, we do not deal in stories. We deal in Physics. We deal in Telemetry.
If you are a first-time leader, you will be tempted to trust the intuition of the veterans. “The VP of Sales has been here for 5 years,” you think. “He knows the road.”
He does not know the road. He is driving with his eyes closed, relying on muscle memory.
You must build the Instrument Panel.
In a high-performance vehicle, the driver does not guess his speed. He looks at the speedometer. He does not guess his RPM. He looks at the tachometer.
If the gauge says the tank is empty, it does not matter if the driver “feels” like he has gas. The car will stop.
Your job is to build the Source of Truth.
The Binary Standard: There are no “shades of grey” in data. It is either recorded, or it did not happen.
“I called the prospect,” the rep says. “is it in the CRM?” you ask. “No, but I—” “Then it did not happen.”
This sounds harsh. It sounds robotic. Good. You are building a machine.
If you allow invisible data, you introduce variables you cannot control. You cannot optimize what you cannot see.
The Metrics That Matter: Do not drown in data. A dashboard with 50 numbers is not a tool; it is a distraction. Focus on the Vital Signs of the engine.
