Our sales team frequently shares glowing customer headlines about massive custom deals they closed, but those same deals routinely overwhelm operations and crush our margins. How do we teach the team to recognize when a positive headline is actually an operational issue that belongs on the Issues List?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A headline is a brief piece of information that keeps the leadership team connected to customer and employee realities. It becomes an issue the moment it exposes friction, deviates from standard process, or impacts downstream capacity. When a salesperson announces a monster contract that requires custom engineering, non-standard payment terms, or rushed delivery, that is not merely good news. It is an operational constraint.

The Integrator must actively police this boundary during the five-minute headlines segment. When a leader shares a win that breaks your operational model, the Integrator must ask two questions. First, did this deal follow our proven process? Second, does delivering this contract jeopardize our current Rocks or operational capacity?

If the answer to either question exposes risk, the Integrator drops it straight to the Issues List. Do not debate it during headlines. Do not rain on the salesperson's parade in the moment. Acknowledge the revenue, write Custom Deal Capacity on the Issues List, and move to the next item on the agenda.

During IDS, the team can address the real tension. You will solve whether sales is targeting your ideal customer profile defined in the V/TO, whether operations has the resources to execute, and how to price custom deviations profitably. Celebrating custom work that wrecks delivery margins teaches the organization to prioritize top-line vanity over bottom-line value. Exit readiness and scalable growth both require disciplined operational repeatability. Treat any deviation from your core model as an issue, regardless of how much revenue it temporarily brings through the door.