A biweekly bulletin for leaders who have outgrown founder-led hustle and are ready to build systems that sustain their vision and scale their business. Each issue decodes one “signal” — those subtle patterns that reveal friction, bottlenecks or untapped leverage. You’ll learn what it means, why it matters and how to fix it, all in 5 minutes or less, so you can shift from signal to system and from vision to velocity.
Your team can’t hit a standard you never set
THE SIGNALYou thought you delegated clearly: “Can you pull together a quick deck on X for next week’s meeting?” Three days later, you’re reviewing a 40-slide masterpiece that took your best strategist and a graphic designer the better part of three days to build. It’s beautiful. It’s also extreme overkill for what you actually needed: five simple slides to drive a decision. Or the opposite: You ask for “a plan” and get three bullet points in Slack with no tradeoffs or clear direction. You feel let down. They feel confused. Nobody is wrong, and yet everyone is frustrated. The cost of this squishy version of “done” is real:
THE PATTERNThis breakdown is almost always caused by stealth expectations, the unspoken standards you assume your team understands. But they don’t share your mental model. They can’t read your mind. You have an internal picture of what good and great look like, but those pictures never fully make it out of your head. And without explicit success criteria, high performers default to their internal standard, usually over-performing because they don’t want to disappoint you. The result: too much swirl, too little alignment and way too much rework. This is why even strong teams stall in the scale-up phase. Misaligned expectations create a ton of drag. In Scrum, there is a concept called the Definition of Done (DOD). Dan Martell popularized it in entrepreneurship circles as a mechanism for effective delegation and a “time hack”. But “done” doesn’t quite cut it. You want it to be done successfully. THE TOOL: DOS (Definition of Success)This is where the Definition of Success (DOS) framework comes in: a blueprint for communicating expectations without ambiguity by defining the full set of criteria required for the work to be considered not just done, but successful. WHO Must have: Who is responsible? Nice-to-haves: Who needs to be informed? Who is impacted downstream? “WHO” eliminates the most common delegation breakdown: unclear or assumed ownership. WHAT What does success look like in measurable terms?
“WHAT” defines observable, objective criteria so no one has to guess where the bar is. WHEN When is it due (in draft and final versions, if relevant)? By when must others receive it? Is this an input to, or output of, another process? “WHEN” removes ambiguity around urgency, sequencing and workflow dependencies. WHERE Where does this live? Where does it get stored, shared or handed off? “WHERE” prevents the classic “completed but not delivered” problem. It also ensures the work winds up in the right location, in the right format, ready for the right action. WHY Why does this matter? Why now? Why this standard? When people understand the strategic importance, and the consequences of a miss, they make smarter decisions without you. “WHY” anchors the emotional and strategic context that enables trust and autonomy. HOW How should the work function once completed? What should this enable others to do? What work should it unblock? “HOW” ensures the DOS clarifies downstream usability, not just upstream output. THE FIX: How to Put DOS Into Practice ImmediatelyRequirements: 10 focused minutes and the willingness to make expectations explicit. A weekly report, a client deliverable, a hiring workflow anything that boomerangs back with edits, questions, or “quick fixes” and is starting to drive you a little nuts. Step 2 — Draft the DOS using the Six Questions Write a simple one-sentence answer for each:
This doesn’t need to be a novel, or even a full-fledged SOP. It just needs to be clear. Step 3 — Pressure-test it with the person doing the work Ask one simple question: “Is anything unclear or incomplete here?” If they hesitate—even for a second—tighten the language. Ambiguity is always expensive. Step 4 — Use a DOS in your next delegation moment Copy/paste the DOS directly into Slack, email, or Asana. Verbal delegation invites stealth expectations right back in. Make the standard visible. Step 5 — Run a 2-minute debrief after completion Ask:
Lock the improvements into the DOS and you’ve created a reusable standard that saves time, not just for this task, but every time it appears again. WHY IT WORKS1. It eliminates stealth expectations. When expectations live in your head, your team can’t meet them. DOS moves the standard into the open so everyone is operating from the same page. 2. It reduces cognitive load—for everyone. Guessing drains executive function. Clarity frees it up for actual problem-solving and strategic thinking. 3. It creates decision-quality work, not draft-quality work. WHO / WHAT / WHEN / WHERE / WHY / HOW gives your team a complete picture, enabling them to deliver finished outputs, not half-done work you need to re-do. 4. It finally solves the “high performer overwork” problem. When the bar is explicit, high performers stop over-delivering “just in case.” That recovers hours of unnecessary effort every week. 5. It builds trust at scale. Clarity gives you permission to step back and it gives your team confidence to step up. 6. It turns delegation from a gamble into a repeatable system. DOS makes performance predictable. This is how you scale without carrying everything alone. YOUR TURNIf this issue hit a nerve… it’s probably not just one task that needs a DOS. It’s the entire operating rhythm. A Signal Session will help you identify where stealth expectations, unclear standards and incomplete success criteria are slowing your team down and where DOS should be implemented across your workflows to restore clarity, velocity and accountability. When the expectations get clear, the flywheel starts spinning. |
The Signal Report
A biweekly bulletin for leaders who have outgrown founder-led hustle and are ready to build systems that sustain their vision and scale their business. Each issue decodes one “signal” — those subtle patterns that reveal friction, bottlenecks or untapped leverage. You’ll learn what it means, why it matters and how to fix it, all in 5 minutes or less, so you can shift from signal to system and from vision to velocity.
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