Operating Model Misalignment

You told your team to be in the field.

But you built a system that rewards staying in the office.

At one company, we talked constantly about the importance of being in front of customers. The expectation was clear. Salespeople should be out in the field, meeting clients and building relationships.

In practice, the operating model pushed in the opposite direction.

There was no real coverage model for when someone was traveling. The informal solution was to ask a teammate to cover your desk as a favor and split any deals that came in while you were away. The more you traveled, the more you gave up your own revenue. The people who stayed in the office kept 100% of their deals.

Over time, the math became obvious.

Traveling meant lower income.

On top of that, coverage only handled the bare minimum. Orders might get processed, but everything else continued to pile up. By the time you got back to your hotel at night, you still had hours of emails, follow-ups, and internal work waiting for you. A full day with clients turned into another three to five hours of catch-up work.

Then expenses became harder to manage. More scrutiny, more friction, more time spent submitting and justifying basic travel costs.

None of these decisions were unreasonable on their own. But together, they created a system that made travel harder, less efficient, and less rewarding.

So people adjusted.

They stayed in the office.

The company didn’t have a culture problem.

It had an operating model that rewarded the opposite of what it asked for.

If you want your team in the field, you have to build a system that supports it.

Otherwise, the system will win.