People Plus Process Equals Profit

Somewhere right now, one of your clients is frustrated with someone on their team for not "just knowing" something nobody ever actually taught them. 

It's one of the most common sentences you'll hear in a client meeting, and it's almost always pointing at the wrong problem.

I sat down recently with Gina Fedeli, President and Founder of P3 Transformation, a full-service operations agency built around one equation: people plus process equals profit.  Gina has spent years in the second seat as a Fractional COO for professional services firms, MSPs, and manufacturers, and before that she was COO of a managed service provider she helped grow from $2 million to $25 million through acquisition. 

This conversation is full of language worth borrowing directly in your own client work.

"They Should Just Know" Is a Clarity Problem, Not a People Problem

Business owners are visionaries. They move fast. When someone on the team doesn't move at the same speed, the instinct is to assume the person is the problem. Gina's response is the reframe worth bringing into your next client conversation.

How should they just know? Have we taught them? Have we given them a process? Have we had a conversation with them? - Gina Fedeli

Sit with that the next time a client is frustrated with someone on their team. How often is the real issue that the client never actually asked in words the person could act on? Gina calls what happens next a lack of clarity, and she names the effect precisely.

There's a lack of clarity. And when there's a lack of clarity, people stand still. Right? People don't know, do I go left? Do I go right? - Gina Fedeli

This is the Expert Trap wearing a different costume. Your client became the business owner because they were brilliant at their craft, not because anyone trained them to lead people. So they lead the only way they know how: assuming everyone sees what they see. 

They don't, and they can't, not without it being handed to them in words. Naming that gap plainly is often the fastest way to shift a client from blaming their team to fixing the actual system.

The Promotion That's Sometimes a Setup

A pattern worth watching for in your own client engagements: promoting the best individual contributor into a leadership role, because the owner wants to reward loyalty and isn't sure what else to do with it.

It feels generous. It's often a setup. Gina described asking someone about to step into a leadership role a question most of us never think to ask before handing over the title.

Talk to me how this aligns with your interests. I understand that you're about to have a new baby. How does this align with that? - Gina Fedeli

Not "do you want this." Something deeper: does this actually fit who they are and what they're carrying right now. Worth building this question directly into your own process before a client promotes someone into a role that was never built for them.

The Warning Sign Hiding in Attendance Records

Gina named one of the clearest early signals of a culture quietly breaking down: absenteeism. Not one person having a rough month. A pattern, in one department, right before the first resignation lands.

It's tempting to point at the individual. Push past that, every time, to the system underneath it. 

Is there structure? 

Do people feel appreciated? 

Is the leader in that seat actually equipped to lead, or are they a talented individual contributor standing in a role that was never built for them?

This connects directly to Leadership and Team Pillars our Certified Fractional COOs focus on: the accountability structures and role clarity that let people know exactly what they own and what they're measured on. Without that, even good people start to look like the problem, when the real gap is upstream, and absenteeism is often your earliest visible data point that something structural is off.

The Hardest Conversation, and Sometimes the Kindest One

Gina was honest about the hardest part of this work: knowing when someone simply isn't in the right seat, and having the conversation anyway.

I recall getting a thank you note from someone that I had let go and they came back and said I was carrying so much weight. I was so unhappy, I was so unhealthy, and thank you for doing what I wasn't able to do. - Gina Fedeli

The kindest thing for someone not thriving in a role isn't protecting them from the truth. It's releasing them into somewhere they can actually succeed. 

This is worth having ready the next time a client is stalling on a difficult people decision, because it reframes the conversation from cold to compassionate.

Gina put the whole philosophy simply: we are the sum of all the parts, and all the parts are the people. Not the software. Not the org chart. The people.

Bring This Into Your Next Client Engagement

Next time a client says someone on their team "should just know," ask Gina's question back to them directly: have they actually taught it, given a process, had the conversation? That single reframe does most of the diagnostic work before you've touched an org chart.

And before your next promotion conversation with a client, borrow Gina's question: does this role actually fit who this person is, not just what they're good at?

Listen to the full conversation with Gina Fedeli for more, including how to spot the difference between a talented contributor and a true leader before the promotion happens.