The Book • Coming Soon
Designing How Your Business Actually Runs
A field guide for leaders tired of running their business on heroics, memory, and crossed fingers. The Deliberate Work methodology transforms accidental chaos into systematic excellence. From Heroics to Systems.
The Definition
Deliberate Work is a methodology for designing how your business actually operates.
It transforms accidental workflows—built on heroics, memory, and tribal knowledge—into systematic, repeatable processes that make excellence inevitable rather than random. Where deliberate practice develops individual expertise, Deliberate Work designs organizational systems that produce consistent results regardless of who's working.
Product One
The product or service customers pay for. The thing on your invoice. The work your team delivers every day. Every business focuses here.
Product Two
Your operating system. The workflows and handoffs that shape whether customers experience excellence—or chaos. This is what Deliberate Work designs.
Most businesses obsess over the first product while accidentally building the second.
Deliberate Work is about designing both—on purpose.
The Spectrum
"Whatever gets it done." Hero-dependent, memory-based, different every time. Exhausting but feels productive. The opposite of Deliberate Work.
"We have some processes." Documented but inconsistent. Depends on who's working. Still fragile under pressure.
"This is how we do it." Designed workflows, clear ownership, measurable outcomes. Calm, repeatable, and systematically improving.
"Every business has an operating system. The only question is whether you designed it or it happened to you."— from Deliberate Work
The Methodology
The Deliberate Work framework transforms how your business operates—one workflow at a time.
See how work really flows today—not how you wish it did. Find the handoffs, delays, and decision points where work gets stuck.
Identify where heroics are required. Where does work break down? What depends on one person's memory? What keeps you up at night?
Architect a deliberate workflow. Define triggers, steps, ownership, and outcomes. Make the implicit explicit. This is Deliberate Work in action.
Create the scaffolding—checklists, templates, automations—that makes the right way the easy way. Remove friction from doing it right.
Reward smooth, boring, reliable execution—not firefighting. Build a team that thinks in systems, not heroics.
Each quarter, a few more workflows stop being heroic and start being systematic. Compounding improvement. Deliberate Work, quarter by quarter.
The Connection
Anders Ericsson's research on deliberate practice revealed how individuals develop expertise: structured training, immediate feedback, and systematic improvement. It's how elite athletes, musicians, and surgeons reach the top of their fields.
Deliberate Work translates these principles from individual skill development to organizational operations. Instead of asking "How do I get better at my craft?", it asks: "How do I design a business that produces consistent excellence—regardless of who's working today?"
"Deliberate Work is what happens when you translate the principles of deliberate practice into business operations."— Joe Minock, author of Deliberate Work
Who It's For
The Deliberate Work methodology applies to any business where work moves between people and systems. But it's especially powerful for:
HVAC, solar, electrical, plumbing, construction. Field crews, job sites, permits, inspections. Where the work happens in the real world.
Consulting, law, accounting, agencies. Clients, engagements, deliverables, billable hours. Where expertise must scale.
SaaS, product teams, creative agencies. Sprints, tickets, projects, cross-functional dependencies. Where complexity compounds.
Common Questions
Deliberate Work is a methodology for designing how your business actually operates. It transforms accidental workflows—built on heroics, memory, and crossed fingers—into systematic, repeatable processes that make excellence inevitable rather than random. The term was coined by Joe Minock, drawing from 25 years of building systems in industrial automation, software, and coaching.
Deliberate practice, coined by Anders Ericsson, is about how individuals develop expertise through structured, feedback-rich training. Deliberate Work applies these same principles to business operations—designing workflows, handoffs, and systems that enable consistent excellence across teams, not just individuals. If deliberate practice is how you get better at a skill, Deliberate Work is how you design a business that produces consistent results.
Deliberate Work is for leaders who build things: founders, operators, and managers in skilled trades (HVAC, solar, electrical, construction), professional services (consulting, law, accounting, agencies), and knowledge work (SaaS, product teams, creative agencies). Anyone whose business depends on work flowing reliably between people and systems.
The Deliberate Work methodology consists of six moves: (1) Map the Actual—see how work really flows today, (2) Name the Pain—identify where heroics are required, (3) Design the Flow—architect deliberate workflows with clear triggers, steps, and ownership, (4) Build the Rails—create scaffolding that makes the right way the easy way, (5) Shift the Culture—reward reliable execution over firefighting, and (6) 90-Day OS Cycles—systematically convert workflows from heroic to deliberate each quarter.
Deliberate Work: Designing How Your Business Actually Runs is currently in development. Join the early access list to receive preview chapters, provide feedback, and be notified when the book launches. Early readers are helping shape the final manuscript.
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