The VP Who Cut 10 Hours with One Question

This is the Minute Business Riff (MBR). Quick takes. Big swings. Leadership riffs you can read in less time than it takes to scroll LinkedIn aimlessly.

One minute. One idea. That’s it.

Today’s word count: 254

It took me 55s to read this.

A VP I know was underwater.

Top-line results looked fine - but underneath? Chaos.

Business reviews took forever. Forecasts were off.

His team spent more time updating the system than actually making progress.

So he did what most leaders do: added more structure.

New fields. New dashboards. Weekly update calls. End-of-week summary emails.

The goal? Clarity.

The result? Confusion - just now in spreadsheet form.

Until one Monday, over lunch, a friend asked him:

“What would this look like if it were easy?”

It hit like a brick.

That night, he pulled up his whole process.

Every dashboard. Every meeting. Every report.

And realized 80% of it was just noise.

So he nuked the system.

Rebuilt it with just three things:

• One pipeline view tied directly to the playbook

• One weekly Slack thread from each sales rep: 3 bullets, no fluff

• One forecast review - 30 minutes max

The result?

His team stopped guessing.

His pipeline got cleaner.

And he got 10 hours of his week back - without losing an ounce of insight.

Because here’s the truth:

Complexity feels safe. But it’s a silent killer.

You don’t need more layers.

You need to see the signal through the mess.

Tactical Takeaway:

If your process feels bloated, ask:

“What would this look like if it were easy?”

Then build that version.

Because more visibility doesn’t mean more spreadsheets.

It means less crap in the way.

And the best operators?

They’re not the ones building dashboards.

They’re the ones smart enough to kill them.

Think this was a banger? Think I’m full of it?

Either way, hit reply and drop some truth bombs.

I read every email 😁

Great leaders are made in minutes. Not meetings.