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I do my best work where strategy is ambitious, ownership is fragmented, and the operating…
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 012** **Pressure Reveals Who Really Runs the Organization** Most organizations have a formal operating model. Under pressure, another one appears. That’s when you find out who really makes #decisions, which priorities actually matter, and where accountability really lives. The org chart says one thing. #Governance says another. But when pressure rises, people stop following diagrams and start following power. The quarter gets tight. A customer escalates. A #transformation misses a milestone. Resources become constrained. Two enterprise priorities collide. Suddenly, the organization begins operating differently. Decisions meant to be delegated move upward. Governance forums become escalation forums. Functions protect their own objectives. Leaders bypass established processes to accelerate outcomes. Teams create workarounds because the formal system no longer moves fast enough. That is when the real operating model becomes visible. Pressure does not necessarily create dysfunction. It exposes the behaviors, decision patterns, and power structures already beneath the formal design. The organization may say authority sits in one place. The operating model may assign it somewhere else. But when consequences become real, people quickly learn where authority actually lives. That gap matters. Organizations do not operate according to the model leaders intended. They operate according to the behaviors #leadership consistently reinforces, especially under pressure. This is why operating model design cannot stop with structure. Leaders have to examine what happens when the system is tested. Who really makes the decision? Which priorities actually win? What gets bypassed? What behavior gets rewarded? Where does accountability move when the stakes increase? Those moments reveal more about the operating model than any diagram ever will. A resilient operating model is not one that works only when conditions are stable. It is one that continues to produce clarity, accountability, and coordinated execution when the organization is under pressure. Operating Principle Pressure does not change the operating model. It reveals the one the organization is actually using. #OperatingModel #PMO #Strategy #EnterpriseTransformation
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 011** **When Growth Outruns the Executive Operating Model** Growth doesn't break organizations. It exposes #leadership systems that were never designed to operate at the organization's new scale. #Growth creates complexity. That's expected. What surprises many organizations is that complexity rarely becomes the problem. The executive operating model does. Early in an organization's growth, leaders succeed through proximity. Conversations happen quickly. Decisions are made informally. Priorities stay aligned because everyone operates from the same context. As the enterprise grows, those conditions begin to disappear. More executives. More business units. More competing priorities. More decisions requiring coordination. The organization evolves. The executive operating model often doesn't. Many organizations respond by redesigning functions, implementing new technology, strengthening governance, or restructuring. Those changes may be necessary. But they rarely address the underlying challenge. The issue is no longer organizational capacity. It's executive #capacity. How does the leadership team make decisions? How are enterprise priorities established? Who resolves conflicts between competing objectives? How does strategy remain aligned as complexity increases? How does the executive team keep operating as one enterprise rather than a collection of highly capable functional leaders? Those questions define the executive operating model. When they remain unanswered, growth begins to expose the gaps. #Decisions slow. #Priorities compete. #Alignment weakens. #Execution fragments. The organization doesn't struggle because its leaders are incapable. It struggles because the leadership system that once enabled success has reached the limits of the scale it was designed to support. Organizations often respond by adding leadership roles, coordination layers, governance forums, or new executive positions. Sometimes those are exactly the right decisions. But they should strengthen the executive operating model, not compensate for its absence. Organizations don't outgrow leadership. They outgrow executive operating models that were designed for a much smaller enterprise. Operating Principle Growth doesn't just demand a larger organization. It demands a more capable executive operating model. #OperatingModel #EnterpriseTransformation #Transformation #ExecutiveLeadership #Strategy #PMO
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 010** **Culture Is an Output of the Operating Model** Organizations spend enormous energy trying to change culture. They launch culture initiatives. They publish new values. They hold workshops, create slogans, and ask employees to embrace new behaviors. Yet many of those efforts produce only temporary change. I believe that's because culture is often treated as something separate from the operating model. It isn't. #Culture is the natural outcome of how an organization actually operates. Employees learn what the organization truly values by observing how decisions are made, what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated, how leaders respond under pressure, how accountability is reinforced, and how priorities are established. Those experiences shape culture far more than any statement displayed on a wall. If decision rights remain unclear, a culture of #accountability will struggle to emerge. If collaboration is encouraged but incentives reward individual success, collaboration will remain the exception, not the norm. If leaders ask for innovation but punish intelligent failure, employees quickly learn that preserving certainty is the safer path. Culture follows the operating model. The operating model defines how work gets done, how decisions are made, how success is measured, and how leaders behave under pressure. Over time, those repeated experiences become culture. This doesn't diminish culture's importance. It elevates the importance of #leadership. Leaders don't change culture by asking people to behave differently. They change culture by redesigning the systems that consistently produce different behaviors. #Change the Operating Model. The Culture Will Emerge. Operating Principle Culture isn't what an organization says it values. Culture is what the operating model repeatedly produces. #OperatingModel #EnterpriseTransformation #PMO #Transformation
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 009** **Most Transformations Fail Before They Begin** Organizations often explain failed transformations by pointing to execution. The program moved too slowly. Adoption was weak. Leaders were not aligned. Teams resisted change. Benefits never materialized. Those things matter. But many transformations are already in trouble long before execution begins. They begin with ambitious outcomes layered onto an operating model that was never redesigned to support them. Priorities remain overloaded. Decision rights remain unclear. Governance continues to create delay instead of clarity. The same people are expected to absorb the transformation while continuing to deliver everything they were already doing. Accountability is spread across functions, while ownership of the outcome remains difficult to locate. Then leadership launches the transformation and expects execution discipline to overcome structural conditions the organization never addressed. That is not an execution problem. It is a design problem. Transformation requires more than a roadmap. It requires an operating model that can carry the change. That means creating capacity before adding commitments. Clarifying decision rights before accelerating decisions. Aligning governance to enable change rather than simply oversee it. Removing work that no longer deserves organizational attention. A #PMO or #Transformation Office can help orchestrate that change, but it cannot compensate indefinitely for an operating model that remains fundamentally unchanged. The real objective is not to manage transformation around organizational friction. It is to redesign the conditions that create the friction. This is why transformation often appears to fail during execution even though the conditions for failure were established much earlier. The launch is simply when the consequences become visible. Operating Principle: Transformation begins with redesigning the operating model, not launching the initiative. #OperatingModel #EnterpriseTransformation #Execution
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 008** **A PMO Should Eventually Become Invisible** Many organizations measure a Project Management Office's success by how visible it becomes. More dashboards. More governance. More meetings. More reporting. Visibility is often mistaken for value. I believe the opposite is true. The most effective PMOs are not the ones that become increasingly central to every decision. They make disciplined execution so natural that the organization no longer depends on the PMO to enforce it. That does not mean governance disappears. It means governance becomes embedded. Leaders understand how priorities are established. Teams know how decisions are made. Projects follow consistent practices because they make sense, not because someone is policing compliance. This is the difference between managing work and building organizational capability. Immature organizations rely on the PMO to create discipline. Mature organizations rely on an operating model that naturally produces discipline. The PMO has shifted from directing execution to designing the system that enables execution. A PMO's goal should never be permanent dependence. Its purpose is to transfer capability to the organization until disciplined execution becomes part of how the enterprise operates. At that point, the PMO has not become less valuable. It has become more successful. When leaders spend less time coordinating execution and more time shaping strategy, the PMO has become nearly invisible. Not because it failed. Because it succeeded. Operating Principle: The best leadership systems don't create dependence. They create organizational capability. #OperatingModel #EnterpriseTransformation #PMO
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 007** **Organizational Debt Is More Dangerous Than Technical Debt** Most organizations understand technical debt. Far fewer recognize that they accumulate organizational debt every day. Organizational debt develops through unclear decision rights, unnecessary approvals, competing priorities, duplicated work, fragmented ownership, and operating models that rely on constant coordination instead of intentional design. Unlike financial debt, it rarely appears on a balance sheet. Unlike technical debt, it often remains invisible because committed people continue finding ways to compensate for it. They schedule another meeting. Escalate another decision. Work another late evening. Coordinate across another unnecessary handoff. For a time, the organization continues to deliver results. The hidden cost is that every success requires a little more effort than the last. Over time, exceptional effort quietly becomes the operating model. This is where organizational debt becomes dangerous. Leadership believes the organization is performing well because it keeps delivering results. In reality, the organization is consuming tomorrow's capacity to sustain today's performance. Organizational debt compounds because every workaround creates another dependency, every dependency increases complexity, and every increase in complexity demands even more coordination. The system gradually becomes harder to navigate, slower to adapt, and increasingly dependent on exceptional people rather than exceptional design. When leaders encounter these symptoms, the instinct is often to ask people to work harder. The better question is, "What about our operating model made that workaround necessary in the first place?" Technical debt can often be reduced through technology investments. Organizational debt requires leaders to redesign the way the organization operates. Ignoring it doesn't eliminate the debt. It simply transfers the cost to the future. Operating Principle: Organizational debt isn't measured by today's performance. Tomorrow's effort reveals it. #StrategyExecution #EnterpriseTransformation #OperatingModel
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 006** **Accountability Is a System** Accountability is one of the most discussed concepts in leadership, yet it is often one of the least understood. When results fall short, organizations frequently search for the person responsible. Accountability becomes a conversation about individuals rather than the system they operate in. I believe that perspective is incomplete. Accountability is rarely determined by personality alone. The environment leaders create around the work largely shapes it. People cannot consistently own outcomes when priorities constantly change, decision rights remain unclear, expectations shift without notice, or success has never been clearly defined. When accountability breaks down, many organizations respond predictably. They increase oversight, demand greater ownership, introduce additional reporting, or reinforce expectations. While these actions may create short-term compliance, they rarely produce lasting accountability because they address behavior rather than the system that shapes it. Real accountability begins long before you measure performance. It begins with clarity: clear priorities, clear decision rights, clear expectations, and clear measures of success. But accountability should not end with measurement. When designed well, accountability creates a continuous feedback loop. People understand the decisions they own, see the outcomes those decisions produce, learn from the experience, and apply those lessons the next time. Over time, accountability becomes one of the primary ways organizations develop stronger judgment, greater trust, and more capable leaders. High-performing organizations do not depend on extraordinary individuals to create accountability. They design operating models where accountability becomes the natural outcome of how work is organized. People understand what success looks like, what decisions they own, and how their work contributes to broader organizational outcomes. Leadership is not demonstrated by holding people accountable after failure. It is demonstrated by building systems where accountability has the opportunity to succeed before the work begins, and where success and failure alike become opportunities to learn, improve, and grow. Operating Principle: Accountability isn't about assigning ownership. It's about creating the conditions for people to grow through ownership. #StrategyExecution #EnterpriseTransformation #OperatingModel #Leadership #Accountability
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 005** **The Best Leaders Design Systems, Not Dependencies** Every organization has people everyone depends on. The executive who approves every major decision. The project manager who keeps every initiative moving. The technical expert who understands every critical system. The leader whom everyone turns to whenever a problem arises. At first, these individuals appear indispensable. Over time, they become organizational dependencies. Many leaders mistake this dependence for effectiveness. They believe their constant involvement demonstrates value because decisions move through them, problems are solved by them, and progress appears to depend on their expertise. In reality, the opposite is often true. The strongest leaders build organizations that become less dependent on them over time. They establish clear decision rights instead of becoming every decision maker. They create repeatable processes instead of relying on personal heroics. They develop other leaders instead of remaining the organization's primary source of direction. The measure of leadership is not how many decisions require your involvement. It is how many decisions no longer do. This is especially true during transformation. Organizations rarely fail because leaders lack capability. They fail because leadership becomes a bottleneck. Every dependency increases organizational friction, while every well-designed system strengthens organizational resilience. When leadership exists primarily in individuals, performance fluctuates with the availability of those individuals. When leadership is embedded within the operating model, performance becomes repeatable, scalable, and sustainable. The objective of leadership is not to become indispensable. It is to build an organization that no longer depends on any one individual to succeed. Operating Principle: Great leaders don't build organizations that depend on them. They build organizations that thrive without them. #StrategyExecution #EnterpriseTransformation #OperatingModel #Leadership
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Charles C. shared thisThe Operating Model **Entry 004** **Capacity Is a Leadership Decision** Every organization eventually reaches the same conclusion: "We don't have the capacity." Capacity is often treated as an operational constraint, as though it is simply the result of headcount, budgets, or resource availability. I believe that's the wrong perspective. Capacity is not merely an operational reality; it is the result of leadership decisions. Capacity is far more than the number of people on payroll. It represents an organization's ability to absorb change while continuing to execute its strategy effectively. Every new initiative competes for the same finite resources: executive attention, organizational focus, expertise, decision-making bandwidth, financial investment, and people's willingness to embrace another change. The question is not whether capacity is limited. Every organization operates within finite constraints. The real question is whether leadership recognizes those constraints before making another commitment. Too often, organizations respond to capacity challenges by asking people to work harder, extend timelines, or absorb one more initiative. These approaches may create the appearance of progress in the short term, but they inevitably erode execution over time. Performance declines not because people become less capable, but because the organization has exceeded its ability to successfully execute. Sustainable execution is never achieved by maximizing utilization. It is achieved by protecting organizational capacity for the work that matters most. This requires leaders to make difficult tradeoffs, decline lower-value initiatives, and preserve the bandwidth necessary to deliver strategic outcomes. Capacity should never be viewed as a scheduling problem to solve after commitments have been made. It is a strategic resource that leadership allocates before commitments are made. Every new initiative consumes organizational capacity. Every initiative that is deferred preserves it. Organizations rarely fail because they lack ambition. They fail because leadership asks the organization to carry more than it was designed to sustain. Operating Principle: Capacity isn't discovered. It's allocated. #StrategyExecution #EnterpriseTransformation #OperatingModel #Leadership
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Charles C. liked thisCharles C. liked thisWe're Hiring in Dallas, TX! Do you have a passion for building meaningful donor relationships and helping supporters create a lasting legacy? Wounded Warrior Project is seeking a Planned Giving Specialist to cultivate, steward, and engage donors interested in making a lasting impact on the lives of wounded warriors and their families. https://lnkd.in/gSq8XCqP #NowHiring @DallasTX #Planned Giving #DonorRelations #NonprofitCareers
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Charles C. liked thisCharles C. liked thisMeet Frank, the newest member of Arrow's Las Vegas studio. Fully assembled, zero onboarding, unusually good at hitting his marks. We make monster games. If you'd like to make them too, message me and let's meet up at G2E and see if we can make it happen.
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Charles C. liked thisCharles C. liked thisLead change with purpose. Build what comes next. Wounded Warrior Project® (WWP) is seeking a Vice President of Transformation in Nashville, TN to guide transformational initiatives across the organization. Situated within the Complex Care portfolio, this executive will lead WWP’s Transformation and Suicide Prevention functions and report to the Senior Vice President of Complex Care. In partnership with leaders across WWP, the Vice President will identify emerging opportunities, develop and test new approaches, and execute enterprise priorities that improve outcomes for warriors and their families. The work includes advancing WWP’s suicide prevention roadmap and strengthening the systems that deliver impact every day. If you are ready to pair innovation with meaningful service, discover this opportunity. #WoundedWarriorProject #NashvilleJobs #MissionDrivenLeadership #Innovation #VeteranSupport #Transformation https://bit.ly/4hB522S #NashvilleTN #NashvilleCareers
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Charles C. reacted on thisCharles C. reacted on thisI’m thrilled to celebrate two significant milestones for my team at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland First, we reached the second major milestone in our multi-year business transformation, Project 120, with the successful launch of Salesforce. This achievement reflects years of planning, design, testing, collaboration, and commitment from an exceptional cross-functional team. Second, I’m honored that Project 120 was named a finalist for the Greater Cleveland Partnership 2026 Best of Tech Awards. This recognition, alongside other innovative organizations, reflects the vision, dedication, and perseverance of our Project 120 team and partners. Transformation at this scale is about more than technology. It empowers people, strengthens mission delivery, and builds a foundation for future innovation. As Project 120 nears completion, I’m grateful for the opportunity to lead this transformation for our Federation. Here’s to continued success in the next chapter of our journey! Interested in joining our team on this journey? Check out these two amazing opportunities that will help to continue transforming the way we work and serve our community Managing Director, Enterprise Applications https://lnkd.in/eynWuJV7 Salesforce Specialist: https://lnkd.in/ePdrHrbB #Salesforce #DigitalTransformation #NonprofitTechnology #BestOfTech #Innovation
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Charles C. liked thisCharles C. liked thisAlthough the game didn’t turn out in our favor, getting to see so many of my MBV brothers and sisters made the day worth it. From business owners and entrepreneurs to leaders in tech and beyond, what an incredible group of veterans to be a part of. Every one of you chose the hard path. After military service, you chose to turn the page and write a new chapter rather than close the book. Proud to be on this journey with all of you. ✌️🇺🇸
Experience & Education
Licenses & Certifications
Volunteer Experience
Courses
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Advanced Leadership Course
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Advanced Wilderness Life Support
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BSR Evavsive and Security Operations Driving Techniques
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Basic Airborne School
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Jerry Barnhart Advanced Marksmanship
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Joint Personnel Recovery Agency SERE (High Risk)
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Military Free Fall HALO/HAHO
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Military Free Fall Jumpmaster
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NCCER Common Core & Welder Level 1
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O'Neil Rally School
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Overland Experts Advanced Off-road Driving
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ROCO Rescue - High Angle / Close Defined Space Rescue
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Ranger Indoctrination Program
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Senior Leaders Course
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Special Operations Combat Medic Course
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Static Line Jumpmaster
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Tactical Tracking Operations
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US Army Pathfinder
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US Army Ranger School
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US Reasearch Institute of Chemical Defense - CBRNE Casualty Course
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Warrior Leader Course
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Honors & Awards
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Beta Gamma Sigma Honors Society
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Pinnacle Honors Society
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Magna Cum Laude
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SALUTE Veterans National Honor Society
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Cum Laude
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Organizations
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NUSVO | National University Student Veteran Organization
Member
- PresentSeek opportunity, Value community, Overcome adversity. The National University SVO engages with student veterans who seek opportunities to continue serving his/her brothers and sisters in arms. With numerous events held throughout the year, the SVO provides a veteran community to our university and allows us, as a team, to affect positive change for the student veteran experience.
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SALUTE | Veterans National Honors Society
Alpha Tier
- PresentSALUTE is the first national academic honor society established for student veterans and military in institutions of higher education. SALUTE symbolizes not only the collective achievement of veterans bettering themselves through the pursuit of knowledge, but also our commitment as a group to honor those among us that are the tip of the spear across the nation. We continue our history and the success of student leaders through continuing to serve. Values: Service, Academics, Leadership, Unity…
SALUTE is the first national academic honor society established for student veterans and military in institutions of higher education. SALUTE symbolizes not only the collective achievement of veterans bettering themselves through the pursuit of knowledge, but also our commitment as a group to honor those among us that are the tip of the spear across the nation. We continue our history and the success of student leaders through continuing to serve. Values: Service, Academics, Leadership, Unity, Tribute, Excellence
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Toastmasters International - Club 1584990
President, Historian
-Advanced Communicator Gold Advanced Communicator Silver Advanced Communicator Bronze Competent Communicator Advanced Leader Bronze Competent Leader
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