💨 The Great Middle Management Vanishing Act

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Featured Job Listings

🏆 Top Picks of the Week (Hand-Picked, High-Impact Roles)

Role: VCIO (Virtual Chief Information Officer)

Company: Intelligent Technical Solutions

Location: Remote | Leadership Team
Why it’s great: This role offers a unique opportunity to serve as a strategic technology advisor to multiple clients, focusing on aligning IT infrastructure with business objectives. This position involves conducting Strategic Business Reviews, developing technology roadmaps, and maintaining strong client relationships to drive technological improvements and reduce business risks.
Apply here: Job Link
Recruiter Contact: Gabrielle Sunga | https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielle-su%C3%B1ga-274623251/

Role: Head of Operations

Company: Portex

Location: San Francisco, CA
Why it’s great: The Head of Operations role at Portex offers a unique opportunity to lead operational strategy at a rapidly growing startup that recently secured $6.25 million in seed funding to revolutionize freight management for small- to mid-sized businesses. This position allows you to shape systems and processes that directly impact efficiency and cost savings in a $4 trillion global industry, working alongside a team dedicated to leveraging AI for transformative solutions.

Apply here: [Job Link]

Note: Seed funding signals early-stage start-up. This would be an equity play. Reach out directly to the founders on LinkedIn with your pitch.

Role: Senior Director, Service Delivery

Company: R1 RCM, Inc | Leadership

Location: Remote
Why it’s great: This role at R1 RCM offers a unique opportunity to lead client service delivery operations within a company at the forefront of AI-driven healthcare transformation. With R1's recent investment from Khosla Ventures and the launch of its R37 AI lab in partnership with Palantir, this position places you at the nexus of operational leadership and cutting-edge innovation in revenue cycle management.

Apply here: [Job Link]
Recruiter Contact: Natalie Fulger | https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-fulger-a0b75622/

Role: Vice President, Change Leader

Company: New York Life Insurance | Leadership

Location: New York, Hybrid
Why it’s great: This is a pivotal opportunity to drive enterprise-wide transformation within a company renowned for its financial strength and commitment to innovation. With recent leadership transitions in the Foundational Business unit, this position offers the chance to shape and implement change strategies that align with the company's long-term vision and operational excellence.

Apply here: [Job Link]
Recruiter Contact: Caitlin Praimnath | https://www.linkedin.com/in/caitlin-praimnath-068189133/

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Bots Take the Wheel

🤖 Automate the Weekly Status Report

Pain Point: Crafting and sending regular stakeholder updates is time-consuming and often repetitive.

Solution: Utilize automation tools like Make.com to automate the creation and distribution of stakeholder updates.

🔧 What It Does:
Every Friday at 9am, this Make scenario pulls updates from a Google Sheet and sends a summary email to a distribution list.

🧩 Tools Needed:

• Make.com (free tier is fine)

• Google Sheets (for storing updates)

• Gmail (for sending emails)

🛠 Setup Steps in Make

1. Trigger Module:
   ➤ Schedule → Set it to run every Friday at 9:00 AM.

2. Data Source Module:
   ➤ Google Sheets: Get Range Values

   How It Works:

   • You define the range like Sheet1!A2:D100

   • It pulls all the values within that rectangle (think rows + columns)

   Example Setup for Weekly Stakeholder Updates:

   • Column A: Project Name

   • Column B: Owner

   • Column C: Status Update

   • Column D: Last Updated (date field you can filter by)

3. Formatter (Optional):
   ➤ Text Aggregator to compile the updates into a clean bulleted list.

   1. Source Module:
      Select your “Get Range Values” module from the dropdown.

   2. Text Field:
      In the input box, enter something like this:
      

• {{1}} – {{2}}: {{3}} (Last updated: {{4}}) 

1. Here's what those placeholders mean:

   = First cell in the row (e.g., Project Name)

   = Second cell (e.g., Owner)

   = Third cell (e.g., Status Update)

   = Fourth cell (e.g., Last Updated)

2. Line Breaks: Just press Enter at the end of each bullet if you want them on separate lines. Make adds the separator automatically per row.

3. Email Module:
   ➤ Gmail: Send Email 
   ➤ To: Stakeholder email list
   ➤ Subject Line would be

Weekly Project Update – {{formatDate(now; "MMMM d, yyyy")}}

1. Weekly Project Update
   ➤ Body Template:

Hi team,

Here are the latest updates as of {{formatDate(now; "MMMM d, yyyy")}}:

{{your_text_aggregator_output_here}}

Let me know if you have questions or need a deeper dive.

Best,  
{{Your Name or Title}}

Visionary Voices 

📝 How Revathi Advaithi is Rewiring Global Manufacturing

Revathi Advaithi is a force at the intersection of manufacturing, leadership, and mission-driven innovation. As CEO of Flex, a $26B global manufacturing giant, she oversees over 170,000 employees and operations across 30+ countries. But Advaithi's impact reaches far beyond the factory floor.

Since taking the helm in 2019, she has steered Flex toward greater sustainability, resilience, and digital transformation, solidifying its role not just as a contract manufacturer but as a strategic partner in solving complex global supply chain challenges. Under her leadership, Flex has leaned into automation, AI, and circular economy practices, making it a quiet but potent player in the future of tech-enabled operations.

Advaithi is also a champion for diversity in leadership and women in STEM. As a board member at Uber and Catalyst.org, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, she uses her platform to push for equitable representation and climate accountability in global business.

For delivery professionals navigating today’s fast-moving supply chain, Advaithi offers a model of operational excellence grounded in purpose and scale. A notable example is Flex's factory in Sorocaba, Brazil, which was recognized by the World Economic Forum's Global Lighthouse Network for its innovative adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies. This facility not only achieved significant efficiency gains, such as an 81% reduction in material loss and a 23% increase in overall equipment effectiveness, but also prioritized employee well-being through real-time ergonomic monitoring and upskilling initiatives. The factory's circular economy ecosystem led to a 94% reduction in material waste and a 38% reduction in plastic material costs, demonstrating a commitment to sustainable practices.

👉 Want to lead like Revathi? Explore Flex’s Sustainability Report, or follow her interviews via World Economic Forum and Catalyst.

Then consider how your delivery systems can do more than ship fast. How can they make the world better?

✨ Weekly Recommendations

Asana: Offers AI-powered recommendations to enhance team productivity and project efficiency.

"Project Management Trends in 2025": An article discussing the evolving landscape of project management and emerging trends .

Ever wonder what it takes to put on a successful festival? Cat McDevitt of Eventeny gives a deep dive.

Tool: Almanac's Delivery Ops templates — SOPs that don’t suck.

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Professional Development

📚 Why Delivery Professionals Must Lead, Not Just Manage

In the trenches of delivery work, it's easy to get bogged down by the minutiae—Gantt charts, status meetings, and endless documentation. But the role of a project manager is evolving. Gartner predicts that by 2026, two-thirds of project managers' skills will need to be redesigned to meet shifting expectations of agility, influence, and strategic alignment.

The lesson? It's time to stop managing like it's 2012.

Take the University of Minnesota's Capital Planning group. By shifting to a leadership-based project model, emphasizing vision and clarity over control, they reduced their management load by 90% and still cut costs. Similar results came from the U.S. Army Medical Command, which overhauled its PM model to improve performance through proactive risk management and team empowerment.

If you’re still clinging to daily stand-ups as your primary lever of influence, you’re missing the bigger play. Modern delivery leadership is about steering, not rowing.

Here’s how to lead vs. manage in today’s environment:

• Set vision, not just deadlines: Define the why behind the work. Align outcomes with strategy, not just timelines.

• Create clarity, not control: Simplify scope and remove ambiguity. Trust teams to execute within defined boundaries.

• Coach, don’t supervise: Give feedback, unblock issues, and develop people. Micromanagement kills momentum.

• Think systems, not silos: Map dependencies and communicate context. Be the connector who sees across swimlanes.

• Escalate purposefully: Not everything needs to go up the chain. Model good judgment on what truly matters.

Reddit threads from r/projectmanagement echo this: PMs feel stuck being “task jockeys” instead of strategic enablers. The cure isn’t more reporting, it’s better leadership. As automation handles more of the grunt work, the future belongs to those who can inspire, simplify, and move teams toward impact.

So as you plan your next initiative, ask yourself: Are you managing tasks? Or are you leading through clarity?

How I can Help

Wanna chat IRL? Connect with me on LinkedIn and we can set up some time.

Career Guide Coming Soon!

I love feedback. If you have topics you want to see? Or thoughts or ideas on how to serve the community better, please hit reply. I read all emails.

Until next time,

The Business of Delivery

Quiet moves. Bold Careers.