The Operator’s Playbook: Building a Process-Driven Culture From the Inside Out
Process Importance: Companies primarily fail due to lack of infrastructure, not because of a bad idea.
Founders' Mindset: Founders often deprioritize process, prioritizing growth and vision over structured operations.
Cultural Shift: Creating a process culture allows businesses to scale without relying on individual institutional memory.
Team Involvement: Successful implementation requires buy-in from both founders and team members.
Leadership Role: Effective process culture balances founder's vision with structured operational systems.
Most companies don't fail because of a bad idea. They fail because the infrastructure to support a good one never got built. For founders focused on growth, vision, and momentum, process can feel like a luxury — something to figure out later, once the hard work of building is done. But later has a way of never arriving. And by the time a company feels the strain of operating without structure, the cost of retrofitting one is significantly higher than if it had been built from the start.
Building a process culture isn't about slowing down or adding bureaucracy. It's about creating the conditions under which a business can actually scale — where decisions don't bottleneck at the founder, where teams know what they own, and where growth doesn't depend on any one person's institutional memory. It's the difference between a business that runs on people and one that runs on systems.
Derek Fredrickson, Founder & CEO of The COO Solution, has spent his career helping companies make that shift. Here's how he does it.
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Why Companies Lack a Process Culture From the Get-Go
For most founders, process is an afterthought — and according to Fredrickson, that's by design. "It primarily starts with the founder, the business owner. They're not process-minded. They're not focused on how we're doing things. They're focused more on where we're going, what we want to do, and why." he says. The result is a business built on momentum rather than infrastructure, where the day-to-day mechanics of operations get quietly deprioritized in favor of growth targets, sales, and visibility.
It primarily starts with the business owner. They’re not process-minded. They’re not focused on how we’re doing things. They’re focused more on where we’re going, what we want to do, and why.
The problem compounds over time. As the business scales, the operational playbook doesn't get written down — it gets absorbed. "The playbook of how they run their company sits in their head," Fredrickson explains. "What's the SOP for this? What's the playbook for that? It usually lives in the founder's head because they don't make the time or the effort to document it or create a process because it's not their zone of genius. They're not wired for it. It's not something that feels like it's going to move the needle." New team members inherit whatever they can extract from the founder's mental model, and the cycle continues.
But there's a ceiling to that approach. "At a certain point, when they realize that in order to keep growing and scaling, you can't scale just the business owner, you need to build the foundation, and that's the engine that can scale," Fredrickson says. That realization — and the willingness to act on it — is where process culture begins.
Defining a Process-Driven Culture
Before a company can build a process culture, it helps to understand what one actually is. For Fredrickson, the definition is straightforward: "A process-driven culture is a systematic way of how you do what you do in your business."
In practice, that means replacing improvisation with repeatability. "One of the things that we aim to achieve is what I call a reliable, results-driven process. Meaning this is the playbook of how we run the business. It is the system or the process that's going to allow us to scale. As opposed to building the plane as we fly it," he explains. The distinction matters because chaos, however functional it feels in the short term, has a hard limit. "This playbook creates simplicity in the running of the day-to-day of the business."
A process-driven culture is a systematic way of how you do what you do in your business.
Critically, Fredrickson is careful to draw a line between valuing process and devaluing people. "One of our objectives is to build a process-driven company, not a person-driven company. That doesn't mean that we don't value people, but that the people in the organization value a process. They like their lane," he says. The goal isn't to reduce employees to cogs — it's to give them a structure that lets them do their best work.
Getting Buy-In — From Founders and Teams
Even when founders intellectually understand the need for process, getting them to embrace change is its own challenge. "For things to change, team members – including the founder – have to be willing to change," Fredrickson says.
The good news is that when founders do commit, the payoff extends well beyond operational efficiency. "When they see that they have more control, not less, it unlocks a lot for a founder. Number one, they have more clarity, and they can see a bigger vision for the organization. And then from that clarity, they build their confidence back up so that they can take bigger risks and make bolder decisions," he says.
When they see that they have more control, not less, it unlocks a lot for a founder. They have more clarity, and they can see a bigger vision for the organization.
Getting the team on board is equally important — and often more emotionally charged. "When we step in as a COO or an operator, one of the first assumptions from the team is, ‘Oh no, am I at risk of losing my job? Are they gonna judge what I'm doing?’" Fredrickson says. Managing that fear carefully is part of the work. When it's handled well, the results speak for themselves: "Better processes enable team members to do things more efficiently and effectively, with everyone moving to the same rhythm and in the same direction.”
Part of what makes that rhythm possible is something as basic as clarity of ownership. "We need to get really clear on who owns what, their role, and what their responsibilities are. Sometimes what a team member thinks their role is is very different from what leadership thinks it is," Fredrickson notes. Until those gaps are surfaced and closed, even well-intentioned process efforts will stall.
The Three Phases of Building Process Culture
When Fredrickson and his team step into an organization, they follow a three-phase model: diagnose, design, and drive.
The first phase is about understanding before acting. "It’s a combination of assessing and diagnosing. We want to understand what the core challenges and opportunities are. From doing this, trust gets built because we're not coming in and saying you need to change this, you need to change that," he explains.
It’s a combination of assessing and diagnosing. We want to understand what the core challenges and opportunities are. From doing this, trust gets built
From that foundation of trust, the design phase begins — mapping out what a more structured operation could look like. "We might bring in, as an example, a project management tool. Or, we might look at how – or if – the team is using a CRM, or how meetings are being run, or how KPIs are being tracked," Fredrickson says.
Then comes the drive phase, where the real work of implementation takes hold. The model Fredrickson uses is deliberate: "We perform the process for the team, then we do it with the team, and then they do it autonomously.” This enables confidence in a process, without over-reliance on the operator.
What Process Culture Looks Like When It's Working
How do you know when a process culture has actually taken root — rather than just being performed for an audience? For Fredrickson, there's a concrete marker. "My goal is that no one shows up to work and says, ‘What do I do? What am I working on today?’ Because, that's all in Asana. You know what you're doing, you know when you're doing it, you know who you need to communicate or collaborate with. And, you know how, because that's in the SOPs."
But beyond the operational signals, there are human ones too. "People feel more aligned. They feel more energized. They feel more excited to do what they're doing because it's contributing to the bigger picture," Fredrickson says. When process culture is real, people don't just follow the system — they believe in it.
People feel more aligned. They feel energized. They feel excited to do what they’re doing because it’s contributing to the bigger picture.
Handling Non-Adopters and Resistance
No rollout is without friction. In Fredrickson's experience, the biggest implementation challenge is consistent: "The non-adopters, the ones that are resistant to change – if they're not willing to get on board, everybody else will be like, ‘Well, if Susan doesn't have to do it, then why do I have to do it?’”
When resistance hardens into a refusal to change, founders are faced with a difficult decision.
Fredrickson frames it plainly: "That person may have got you here, but that person is not going to get you there. Are you looking to scale? Or are you just looking to maintain status quo? If you want to maintain status quo, keep the non-adopter...but, if you want to grow in scale, we need someone that’s open to doing things differently." It's a difficult conversation, but it's a necessary one.
Getting Leadership Buy-In from the Inside
For team members who can see the need for process but lack the authority to mandate it, Fredrickson offers a reframe that can shift the conversation entirely. "You don't fix problems, you solve issues. Problems are a byproduct of the underlying issue that's in place," he says. The practice of asking why — repeatedly — is what makes the difference. "Nobody takes the time to ask the question why, and then ask the question why again. And when you ask those questions again, you get to the root cause of what the issue is."
When trying to build momentum from within, the direction of the rollout matters as much as the content. "When it comes from the bottom up, it's hard to get full buy-in. It's hard to get momentum. But, when it’s coming from the business owner and the COO is the one that's going to orchestrate it across the entire organization, that's often more effective."
When it comes from the bottom up, it's hard to get full buy-in. It's hard to get momentum. But, when it’s coming from the business owner and the COO, that's often more effective.
Once leadership is aligned, internal champions become the most powerful accelerant. "Internally, you might have who we call cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are the ones in the organization that have used these tools in the past, have used similar processes, and they act as your torchbearers because they've done it before."
Process Culture and the Founder's Vision
Perhaps the most nuanced element of building a process culture is ensuring it doesn't come at the expense of the very thing that built the business in the first place: the founder's vision. "You never want to stifle the ideation, the creative ability of the founder. That's the juice of the business. So if you build a culture where the process structure is a box that boxes the founder in, it's not gonna work," Fredrickson says.
You never want to stifle the creative ability of the founder. That’s the juice of the business. So if you build a culture where the process structure is a box that boxes the founder in, it’s not gonna work.
His approach is to hold space for both. When a founder surfaces a new idea mid-execution, the answer is never a hard no. "We never say no. We say yes and. Yes and…We also need to take into consideration these other projects that are already happening...you never want to say no. Because when you say no, it squashes the idea."
Holding that balance is, ultimately, the hallmark of great operational leadership. "It's also part of the role of a really good COO to have this EQ component to be able to have those types of conversations with the founder. So there's that trusted partnership that is like a see-saw, balancing idea creation and process structure."
Process culture, done right, doesn't constrain a founder's vision — it gives it somewhere to land.
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