The Strongest Businesses Are Built to Absorb Disruption
- Kelsea Koenreich
- 6 days ago
- 10 min read
In This Post
→ The Weekend That Could Have Derailed Everything
→ What a Fractional COO Actually Does
→ The Real Signs Your Business Needs Operational Support
→ Why Your Systems Are Only as Good as Your People
→ The One Thing She Fixes First
→ The Three Biggest Mistakes Busy CEOs Are Making Right Now
→ Three Things You Can Do This Week
The Weekend That Could Have Derailed Everything
Three kids, solo parenting, and a time change all in the same weekend. There was a version of me that would have felt completely consumed by it. Running on fumes, white knuckling through bedtime, and showing up to the week already behind before it even started.
That is not what happened. And it is not because I have a perfect routine or a flawless system. It is because I have spent years building a business and a life with enough structure underneath them that one disrupted weekend does not take the whole week down with it.
That is what this post is really about. Not daylight savings. Not solo parenting. The thing underneath all of it: what does it actually mean to build a business that can absorb the unexpected without it all landing on you?
I brought Leah Rosser onto the podcast this week to talk about exactly that. Leah is a Fractional COO and the founder of Out of the Box Ops, and she is one of the most clear-eyed operators I have ever watched work. If you have ever felt like your team is full, nothing is moving, and somehow everything still routes back through you, this conversation was made for you.
What a Fractional COO Actually Does
Most people hear fractional COO and think automations. Tech stack. Notion boards and Zapier workflows. And while those things are part of it, Leah is quick to point out that they are the smallest part of it.
What she actually does is look at how everything in your business works together. How you communicate internally. How decisions get made. How tasks move from idea to completion without getting lost in a Slack thread that turned into a conversation about someone's birthday. The systems matter, but the people using them matter more. And if your people do not have clear expectations, clear processes, and clear decision-making authority, no software in the world is going to fix that.
Leah describes her work as an act of love. And I know that might sound like a stretch when you are talking about SOPs and project management systems, but hear her out. When someone comes into your business and tells you the truth about what is not working, that is not an attack. That is care. It is the same energy as a good friend who cleans out your pantry and reorganizes it while you watch in mild horror, knowing they are right about all of it.
The goal is never to expose what is broken. It is to set you up for what is next. And the trust that gets built in that process, when someone sees the real back end of your business and still shows up with solutions instead of judgment, that is what makes the work actually stick.
The Real Signs Your Business Needs Operational Support
Here is what Leah hears most often from founders who reach out to her: my team is at capacity but nothing is moving. Everyone is busy. Nothing is getting done. And the CEO is standing in the middle of it all trying to figure out what went wrong.
She is consistent in her answer: this is almost never a people problem. It is a clarity problem. When your team members do not have clear expectations, clear processes, and clear parameters for their roles, they spend their energy trying to decode what is expected of them rather than actually executing. The output looks like underperformance. What it actually is, is a team operating without enough information to do their best work.
Other signs the design needs attention: you cannot take a day off without your phone blowing up. You have tried multiple project management systems and none of them have worked, and you are starting to wonder if the problem is the software. You have a team member you have been loyal to for years who may no longer be in the right seat, and you do not know how to address it without blowing up the relationship. Things are growing but you feel more behind than you did when the business was smaller.
If any of that is familiar, keep reading.
Why Your Systems Are Only as Good as Your People
This is the part most founders miss. They invest in the system and skip the people side, or they focus on the people and let the systems stay chaotic. Leah is consistent on this: you cannot separate the two. People and systems work hand in hand, and if one side is broken, the other one will be too.
One of the most common things she sees is a CEO who sends a Slack message at 3am with a new idea, expects it to become a completed task, and then wonders why nothing moved. Here is what actually happened: your team member woke up to a ping, their nervous system responded accordingly, and they spent the next two days trying to decode what you meant and whether it was urgent enough to drop everything else for. You created a retention problem with one message and did not even know it.
The fix is not complicated but it does require intention. Brain dumps go somewhere that does not ping your team in the middle of the night. Tasks go into a project management system with a clear owner and a clear deadline. Meetings have agendas. And when you delegate something, you give the full picture: the who, the what, the when, the why, and what done actually looks like.
That last part is where most delegation breaks down. You have been thinking about this for three weeks. You have imagined it from every angle. You know exactly what it should look like when it is done. Your team member has had the task for 48 hours and none of that context lives anywhere except your head. When the output does not match your vision, the frustration is understandable. But the setup was not fair.
The One Thing She Fixes First
I asked Leah directly: if a founder comes to you completely overwhelmed, what is the first thing you touch?
Her answer was the calendar.
Not the tech stack. Not the SOPs. The calendar. Because if the CEO does not have room to breathe, to think, to step back and actually lead the business instead of just running inside of it, nothing else you fix will hold. The foundation of the business is the person at the center of it. And if that person is buried, the business is buried with them.
After the calendar she looks at task ownership across the team. Who is actually doing what? What are the nuances inside each workflow that even the CEO may not fully know? And then she moves into SOPs, making sure the way things get done is documented clearly enough that someone could pick it up without ten clarifying questions.
The goal of all of it, as Leah puts it, is to get you out of office. Not just for vacation. On a regular basis. Because the time you spend not in your business is the time that proves whether it was actually built to run without you. And it is also the time where you get to think about where it goes next.
The Three Biggest Mistakes Busy CEOs Are Making Right Now
Leah does not soften this, and I appreciate that about her. Here is what she sees most often.
Hiring fast and cheap. You need help now, so you prioritize speed and cost over fit. You end up managing two people doing half the work one intentional hire would have done. Hiring slowly and well is almost always the better investment, even when it does not feel that way in the moment.
Adding systems without processes. You hear about a new platform, add it to your tech stack, and six months later you have seven subscriptions, three overlapping tools, and a team that does not know which one to use for what. The platform is rarely the problem. The process behind it is. Most of Leah's clients can cut four to five hundred dollars a month just by consolidating what they already have.
Not taking a beat to assess. This one is the hardest because it goes against every instinct you have as a visionary. Things are growing, momentum is there, and slowing down feels like the worst possible thing you could do right now. But moving fast without stopping to assess means you keep building on a foundation that may not hold the next level. The assessment is not the pause. It is what lets you keep going.
Three Things You Can Do This Week
If you are reading this and recognizing yourself in any of it, here is where Leah says to start.
Get clear on your calendar and your boundaries. What are you actually willing to do in your business right now? What feels non-negotiable for your life? Start there before you touch anything else, because every other decision flows from it.
Get clear on where you want to go. This sounds obvious but most founders skip it. Are you building toward a lean, profitable business where you stay closely involved? Or are you building something that eventually runs largely without you? The answer changes everything from who you hire to what you systematize to how you structure your time.
Assess your team honestly. Do you have the right people in the right seats? Do they understand what success looks like in their role? You do not have to make any moves today. But you do need to be honest about what you are seeing, because tolerating a misaligned team costs more than the discomfort of addressing it.
Frequently Asked Questions
My team looks busy but nothing is actually moving. Where do I start?
This is almost always a clarity problem, not a people problem. When your team does not have clear expectations, clear decision rights, and clear parameters for their role, they spend their capacity trying to figure out what is expected rather than executing. The starting point is usually the calendar and task ownership: who is actually responsible for what, and do they have everything they need to do it without coming back to you? That audit alone tends to surface the biggest gaps quickly.
I've tried multiple project management systems and none of them work. What am I missing? The system is almost never the problem. Leah puts it plainly: the platform is not broken, the process behind it is. Most founders add a new tool without building a real workflow around it, and then wonder why the team does not use it consistently. The question is not which system to use. It is whether the way you are using it matches how your team actually needs to receive and track work. That is a process question, not a software question.
What is the difference between a business coach and a fractional COO?
A business coach helps you think through strategy, direction, and leadership decisions. A fractional COO comes inside the operations and builds the infrastructure that makes strategy executable. Leah's take is that the ideal scenario is having both: someone helping you see the bigger picture and make the right calls, and someone ensuring the structure exists to actually carry it out. If you have been hiring coaches for problems that are fundamentally operational, that gap is worth examining.
How do I delegate without it turning into micromanagement?
Delegation breaks down when the handoff is incomplete. If your team member does not have a clear scope, a clear deadline, a clear picture of what done looks like, and access to everything they need to execute, they will either come back to you constantly or miss the mark entirely. The fix is building repeatable, documented processes so that delegation is a handoff to a clear system, not a brain dump to a person. The 30 seconds it takes to record a quick Loom or write out the details upfront saves hours of follow-up on the back end.
I know something needs to change but I can't see exactly what it is.
That is the most honest place to start, and it is exactly what the assessment process is built for. Blind spots are, by definition, things you cannot see from inside your own business. Fill out the inquiry form. It is not an application and it is not a commitment. It is a conversation to understand where you are, what is driving the friction, and whether working together makes sense. There is no pressure and no obligation.
The Bottom Line
The strongest businesses are not the ones where nothing ever goes wrong. They are the ones built to absorb disruption without everything landing on the CEO to hold together.
That is what good operational infrastructure actually gives you. Not a perfect system. Not a team that never makes mistakes. A foundation solid enough that when life does what life always does, an unexpected weekend, a time change, a week that starts completely sideways, the business keeps moving. And you are not white knuckling through every disruption just to stay afloat.
The business that runs on your brain, your decisions, and your nervous system has a ceiling. And that ceiling is you. The business designed with real team ownership, clear decision rights, and the right processes has a different ceiling. One that actually matches your ambition.
That is what we build. And it starts with being honest about where you are right now.
Two ways to go deeper from here: City Girls is coming to Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, and Dallas-Fort Worth this year. Twenty seats per city, built for the established founder who is ready to be in a room that raises the standard. Tickets and dates are linked below.
My interest form is for you if you are reading this and thinking: I need someone who can see what I am not seeing. It is not an application. It is a conversation to understand where you are and whether working together is the right fit. Both links are in the show notes.
You do not need everything to be broken to justify rebuilding what you have outgrown. You just need to be honest about what you are building toward, and whether your current structure is built to hold it.
📱 Instagram: @kelseakoenreich // @themomfounderstable
