Our operations and sales seats are in a constant state of friction over custom client demands, and our weekly Level 10 Meetings™ are devolving into finger-pointing. How can I use Keith Cunningham's Thinking Time framework to diagnose whether this is a people issue or a fundamental flaw in our Accountability Chart structure?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To diagnose this friction, you need to step away from the noise of daily operations. Schedule a dedicated 45-minute Thinking Time session, free from distractions, with a notebook and a pen.

Start your session by writing down a high-value question designed to cut through the emotion: How might we define the boundaries between sales and operations so that our delivery standards are protected without killing our sales pipeline?

Use this time to analyze the specific roles listed under each seat on your Accountability Chart. Often, this type of friction occurs because of a structural gap: there is no clear owner for productization or scoping. If Sales has the role of custom quoting and Operations has the role of delivery, but nobody owns setting the guardrails of what we can actually deliver, conflict is inevitable.

Look at the behavioral data of your seat holders. Is your Sales Director a high Quickstart who ignores process, while your Operations Director is a high Follow Thru who demands strict compliance?

If so, this is a structural predicament that requires a process-driven solution. You may need to add a scoping or productization role to the Sales seat, or create an onboarding handoff seat to bridge the gap.

By using Thinking Time to analyze the structure objectively, you can determine if the friction is caused by a poor seat design or a true right-person-wrong-seat issue.