Issue No. 364 — Published Weekly Since March 2018
The Archive.
Seven years of weekly long-form essays, decision journals, and audio breakdowns for operators who treat how they work as seriously as what they ship. Every claim linked to a primary source. Every issue still online.
The Record, By the Numbers
A publication that has shown up, every Tuesday, for seven years.
- 364 Weekly issues published since March 2018 — zero off-weeks
- 51.2% Average open rate across the last 26 issues, third-party audited
- 38,400 Downloads in week one for Issue #271, the most-read in our archive
- 91%+ Paid member renewal rate across 19 consecutive quarters
The Index — Reverse Chronological
Recent issues.
Each entry carries the issue number, series, read time, and publication date. Tap any row to read the full essay and its audio breakdown.
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The Quarterly Planning Doc That Replaced 14 Standing Meetings
Why the cheapest operating upgrade a 400-person team can make is a 12-page planning doc nobody reads on Monday morning — and the exact structure we recommend.
Published Tuesday, 24 February 2026
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Reversible vs. Irreversible: A Two-Line Test For Every Cross-Functional Decision
A field guide to deciding which choices deserve a 90-minute meeting and which deserve a Slack message — drawn from 38 decisions logged by our Operating Partners members.
Published Tuesday, 17 February 2026
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The Five-Question Meeting Audit We Run Every Quarter (With Template)
The five questions our research desk uses to decide whether a recurring meeting has earned another six months on the calendar — and the script for telling a VP their meeting is the problem.
Published Tuesday, 10 February 2026
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The 72-Hour Rule: How We Cut Our Annual SaaS Spend by 31% Without Firing a Vendor
A pragmatic procurement protocol any ops lead can run next quarter, with the exact email templates and a one-page vendor scorecard our members have used since 2023.
Published Tuesday, 3 February 2026
Reader Note — On Issue No. 271
“I read 'The Meeting Audit That Saved $4.2M' on a Sunday and ran the protocol with my staff on Monday. By Thursday we had killed eleven recurring meetings, reclaimed nine hours per VP per week, and redirected the equivalent of one full-time hire's capacity into the roadmap. It is the only Substack essay I have ever printed, annotated, and pinned to a wall.”
Priya Ramanathan — VP of Operations, a 680-person fintech (paid member since Issue No. 198)
Editorial Tracks — Browse By Series
Six durable lines of work, each anchored to a recurring operator problem.
The archive is not a random pile. Issues cluster into named series that recur when the underlying problem recurs — most have run for at least three years.
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98 issues · 2018–present
Operating Systems
The architecture of how a team plans, decides, reviews, and ships. Cited in HBR (March 2023) and a 2024 Stanford GSB case study.
Read the series → -
61 issues · 2019–present
Decision Journal
Frameworks and templates for writing decisions down — pre-mortems, kill criteria, the reversible-vs-irreversible test, and the case for keeping a paper trail.
Read the series → -
44 issues · 2020–present
Meeting Audits
The protocols our team uses to triage recurring meetings. The most-read essay in our archive (Issue #271) lives here.
Read the series → -
37 issues · 2021–present
Hiring Loops
Operator hiring, interview loops, scorecards, and the unsexy work of closing a loop without ghosting a finalist.
Read the series → -
29 issues · 2022–present
Vendor Triage
Procurement protocols, vendor scorecards, and the case for ruthless consolidation. Most popular with chiefs of staff.
Read the series → -
24 issues · 2023–present
Operating Partners Field Notes
Anonymized, written-up case studies from our 1,400 paid members — the messy in-the-room work no one else publishes.
Read the series →
Still Publishing, Every Tuesday
The archive is the record. Issue No. 365 ships next Tuesday at 06:00 Lisbon time.
One long-form, evidence-backed essay plus a 30-minute audio breakdown, free in your inbox. No ads, no growth-hack subject lines, no “quick favors.” 104,000+ operators already read it.
Free forever. Paid membership ($180/year) unlocks the archive's audio editions, reader-submitted research requests (4 business-day turnaround), and the 22-person contributor network's working notes.