The Playbook
High Intensity Rhythm of Business (HI-ROB)
Table of Contents
– Ambiguity kills tech companies—particularly middle market companies where time and money are scarcer resources.
– We build world class teams and get them to work together in a focused way where each leader/function feels accountable to deliver for their colleagues. Daily rigor among great teammates is where the magic happens.
– A globally distributed talent strategy (better cost, as good or better talent) is a competitive imperative for middle market companies. Globally distributed will beat a similar company that’s concentrated in Seattle, the Bay Area, and New York City where bad talent is just as expensive as very good talent.
The Operating System for High Growth Middle Market Tech Companies
From Microsoft to Silicon Valley, we’ve worked with the world’s biggest brands and grown startups into category leaders. Over the years we’ve refined a rigorous operational approach that generates world class results, builds great teams and drives enterprise value.
As CEO, Jeff O’Mara has used this approach to turnaround and accelerate two companies in a row: a healthcare analytics firm and an enterprise wireless optimization SaaS-based firm.
Both companies achieved major success using the High Intensity Rhythm of Business (HI-ROB) operating system to create world class teams with self-reinforcing accountability loops and execution structures.
The HI-ROB system allows subject matter experts (e.g., MDs and PhDs in radio frequency) to provide active input for GTM experts to develop products and services of ever-increasing value to customers to take to market in a high performance, capital efficient way.
WHY: Ambiguity Kills Technology Companies
Every middle market tech company has goals, a plan, and a way of operating. What’s so special about this approach? To understand the value of the solution, it’s critical to clearly identify the problem that needs to be solved. For these types of companies, it’s ambiguity.
Ambiguity is kryptonite for middle market technology companies. Unlike kryptonite, though, ambiguity is everywhere.
Many middle market companies have strong engineering and product teams. They can build nearly anything, but as we’ve all witnessed, that’s a sure path to burning money and time—resources that are far scarcer in middle market tech firms.
Growth is often stymied by the clouded and distorted execution of plans by smart people working very hard to hit their “KPIs” while completely missing the pervasive disconnects between the customer, the product roadmap, and revenue generation goals.
Ambiguity is a silent killer.
HOW: Use HI-ROB as a Flywheel of Operational Excellence
Our model operates as a virtuous cycle. Every function in the business has clear, measurable goals that ladder up to the Company’s overall goals. These are executed with a daily, weekly, monthly Rhythm of the Business model which speeds growth and learning for the business and empowers individuals to drive results.
The HI-ROB is the operating system that keeps the flywheel spinning by ensuring consistent execution, accountability, cross-functional alignment (everyone in the same boat, rowing together), and continuous improvement.
The HI-ROB System runs on established operating rhythms that:
- Standardize work processes
- Connect functions to actively support each other
- Drive clear accountability and ownership, from the CEO to the front-line sales associates
- Enable rapid problem identification and solving
- Accelerate efficient growth
This operational model empowers each function to elevate the overall business. Through structured collaboration and alignment, this approach identifies challenges early (before they become full-blown dumpster fires) so the team can solve them quickly creating a unified drive for growth.
The HI-ROB: A Powerful Operating System for High Growth Middle Market Technology Companies
This operational approach accelerates revenue and profitability by creating a dynamic, adaptable, and scalable company. It emphasizes a high-performance culture, goal alignment, and continuous improvement. Together, these drive durable enterprise value and equip companies to thrive in competitive markets.
What: The HI-ROB Operating System Looks Like This
All company functions should operate in a similar way. We’re surprised how few companies do this. The companies that don’t: learn less over a longer period of time; are surprised with revenue misses more often; miss ship dates more frequently and do extensive product rework; and have lower morale and retention—risking a vicious cycle.
The HI-ROB approach accelerates revenue and profitability by creating a dynamic, adaptable, and scalable company. It emphasizes a high-performance culture, goal alignment, and continuous improvement. Together, these drive durable enterprise value and equip companies to thrive in competitive markets. It looks like this:
- Goals, Execution and Alignment Across Functions
- Executive Alignment, The Order of Battle: The Executive Leadership Team (ELT) proposes clear goals, strategies and an execution plan for Board approval. After approval, the ELT cascades the goals for each function to every team member, from senior executives to entry-level hires. Each team member learns how their daily work contributes to realizing the goals and is empowered to raise questions that move up the chain until the ambiguity is resolved.
- Rhythm of the Business (ROB) Cadence: A structured cadence of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings–by team, function, cross-function, and all-company–keeps goals transparent and creates accountability and alignment across the company. The ELT and function leaders establish specific KPIs, timelines, and a roadmap that turns strategy into action. These enable teams to execute with precision and reprioritize focus as facts change. This is where the magic happens. Daily rigor is what drives the results and creates actionable data for continuous improvement (examples below).
- All recurring meetings except 1:1s have the ELT as optional and include a Zoom link for occasional drop-ins. All remote participants are required to have cameras on. Goals at risk get daily attention from the CEO.
- Sales produces a bottom-up daily forecast reviewed by individual managers in morning standups. There is a clear understanding of each salesperson’s Activity Plan, Pipeline Coverage, and Closed Won deals to meet weekly, monthly, quarterly goals, which are all visible in Salesforce at the individual level. Activity drives results. If not, why not? Poorly performing sales person? A problem with product? Identifying challenges early and solving them quickly is critical for growth.
- # of days on the road and miles flown are not sales metrics.
- Individual 1:1s beat Group Meetings every day of the week.
- Product and engineering have daily standups and 1:1s with managers to keep ship dates on track. Product requirements and scope are approved for their revenue impact and feasibility by the ELT. Each product has a weekly review meeting including the Head of the Product Team and the CEO. Any change in scope must be reviewed and approved by the CEO and Head of Product. Scope/mission creep means missed ship dates and revenue goals.
- Developing High-Performing, Globally Distributed Teams
- Great Teammates, Great Teams: The model emphasizes hiring high-potential talent and fostering a culture where everyone strives to help teammates succeed. By investing in the success of the company, people are also investing in their career development.
- Globally Distributed Talent Strategy: By strategically offshoring roles across every business function, the company gains access to high-quality talent, reduces costs, and improves the speed of execution. The talent and cost structure of a globally distributed middle-market company will outperform a similar company with localized talent in the Bay Area, Seattle or New York.
- Values-Driven Performance
- Be a Great Teammate: A culture of mutual support and accountability aligns every individual to team goals. (Sally sees that John is struggling this week so she picks up the slack. John and other teammates see this and return the favor.) Individuals often achieve more than they ever thought they could.
- Learn-by-Doing: This action-oriented approach builds a growth mindset and encourages continuous improvement. It allows teams to pivot and adapt in real-time without fear of failure. Learning is celebrated. Making the same mistake over and over again is very hard to do in this context.
- Effort Equals Success: With the right resources, training, and commitment from managers, every employee is set up to thrive, contributing to both personal and company growth.
- HI-ROB Promotes Team Growth: High-Intensity can sound scary. The HI-ROB works both for the most ambitious achievers and people who aren’t looking to climb the professional ladder. Everyone wants their work to be recognized and their output to matter. This process makes both more likely.
- Data-Driven GTM Strategy
- KPI-Driven Go-to-Market: By implementing a dashboard for GTM metrics, the team can course-correct in real-time. Teams hit daily, monthly and quarterly targets in a strategic, repeatable, scalable way.
- Market Expansion and Customer Retention: Product innovation (including AI and AR) expands the addressable market, resulting in higher SaaS prices and increased retention—a powerful endorsement of the product’s increase in value.
The Process to Get to the Operational Flywheel
The HI-ROB engagement begins with a 30-day expedited due diligence that identifies what’s working, what’s not, and how to move forward in the most effective way. It pays attention to the emotional component of the team, building on what’s useful given the constraints of where the business currently is, and how quickly it needs to transform.
This process starts by examining/interviewing:
- Three years of financials with a focus on revenue growth by product/service and the expenses that support them.
- Most recent Board deck and strategy memos, including TAM and how to seize it.
- Daily/weekly sales dashboards.
- Daily/weekly marketing dashboards.
- Product roadmap and ability to meet ship dates.
- Team, Customers and Board.
Obvious deficiencies (sales, product, marketing, talent, cost structure) provide opportunity for upside while we sort out more complicated plans. We have overcome hurdles like:
- No product and development process, no clear decisionmakers and no QA, which resulted in small features being reworked 5-10 times, missing ship dates, foisting buggy products on customers (“dogfooding”), and high turnover on the team.
- A sales team, combined with a lack of financial controls, paying itself nearly 200% of on target earnings after missing the annual plan by more than 15%.
- Fictional reporting to the Board about sales and customers that did not exist.
- A Chief Technology Officer who literally didn’t show up for work.
During this due diligence, we get ELT buy-in to build on what’s working, stop what’s not, and begin the HI-ROB. It’s important to find people and processes to build on and give them easy wins. There will be a lot of upside surprises on the team. We want to encourage that.
Prioritize gaps and plans to fill them. Revenue growth is prioritized over everything else.
An Example of What We Can Do: Transforming a 17-Year-Old Technology Business
For a 17-year-old software company with a strategic hardware product, our HI-ROB recently generated transformative results
- Revenue Growth: Revenue more than doubled from $25M to $65M in just five years, with a 6x increase in recurring revenue from $5M to $30M.
- EBITDA Growth: EBITDA increased from $7M to $32M, with margins rising from the high 20% range to 50%.
- Product and Process Improvements: Accelerated product releases from one every four years to four per year. Expanded the addressable user market from specialized systems integrators to IT professionals using AI, AR and making the product more powerful and easier to use. This additional value allowed us to double the price of our SaaS product while increasing customer retention.
- High-Performing Culture: Achieved a 5/5 engagement and alignment score across the team, with a 25% reduction in average personnel cost and $6–$8M annual savings from offshoring. Upgraded 80% of team. Grew and fully integrated offshored team from 5 to 150 people.