Key Takeaways
The Dashboard Is a Lagging Indicator
When asked how he can tell whether an operation is healthy, Denz Lacanlale didn't reach for KPIs. He didn't talk about productivity, service levels, quality or cost. His answer was much simpler: he watches how leaders and their teams interact.
After more than 20 years across customer service, technical support, FinTech, telecom, retail and technology — including helping build Amazon's operations in the Philippines — Denz has learned to look beyond the scorecard.
Because an operation can look perfectly healthy on a dashboard while something underneath it is already starting to break. And by the time the KPI turns red, the problem may have been visible for months.
"The dashboard tells you what has happened. The behaviour inside the operation can tell you what might happen next."
Denz offered a telling example. Imagine an employee doesn't show up for work and returns the following day. What happens next reveals something about the operation. Does the employee become immediately defensive? Do they look for excuses? Or can they say openly: I had an emergency. I should have informed you. I didn't. That's my responsibility.
For Denz, that difference can reveal something much bigger than an attendance issue. It can reveal the level of trust between a leader and their team — and trust doesn't appear as a neat number on most operational dashboards.
Instead, it manifests somewhere else. In attendance. Attrition. Engagement. Communication. Execution. Accountability. Sometimes, he explained, everything can still be green — while the behavioural indicators suggest the operation could be in trouble three months from now.
Process Improvement Can Only Take You So Far
When something isn't working, the instinct is often to fix the structure. Introduce a new process. Change responsibilities. Implement another system. Add controls. Create another workflow.
Denz doesn't argue against that. Structural improvements are an important first step. But there is a ceiling.
He gave a practical example. A manager asks a team to finish an important project and promises that any necessary overtime will be paid. The team delivers. Payroll arrives. The overtime wasn't approved.
The next time that manager asks the team to make an extra effort, the process isn't the problem anymore. The relationship is. You can introduce another initiative, improve the workflow, create another policy — but the team remembers what happened.
"Operational performance isn't just the result of good processes. It is also the result of whether people believe the organisation will do what it says it will do."
Scaling Means Building an Operation That Doesn't Need You Everywhere
Denz learned another version of this lesson while helping launch Amazon's operation in the Philippines. He had launched accounts before — but entering a new country was different. There wasn't simply an operational checklist waiting to be followed.
Suddenly the job stretched far beyond hiring and training. Compliance. Real estate. HR. Contracts. Local requirements. Leadership development. Organisational structure. And at the same time, the operation had to be capable of scaling quickly.
One factor became particularly important: finding the right leaders early enough to scale with the organisation. And Denz's definition of strong leadership isn't having the most senior person involved in every decision. It's almost the opposite.
Train people. Mentor them. Give them increasing responsibility. Then get out of their way.
That frees senior leaders to work on the things only they can do — including growing the business.
"A healthy operation doesn't prove the importance of its leaders by constantly needing them. It proves their effectiveness by functioning when they aren't in the room."
Technology Should Give People Capacity Back
Denz is far from anti-technology. He has experimented extensively with AI and has built tools designed to help team managers and operations managers save significant amounts of time. But his objective isn't replacing people. It's equipping them.
That distinction matters. Because somewhere along the digitalisation journey, many organisations have created a strange situation. Technology was supposed to make operations easier. Instead, operators increasingly spend their days serving the technology.
Updating systems. Entering information. Checking dashboards. Moving data between applications. Monitoring another screen. Maintaining another workflow. The system becomes another operational layer.
Sometimes Technology Should Disappear
When asked whether there are situations where technology should simply step aside, Denz immediately thought about coaching.
In the BPO environment he knows well, coaching between leaders and their people is a critical part of running the organisation. And his view is refreshingly direct: when you're having that conversation, have the conversation. Don't turn it into another interaction with a system. Listen. Understand what the other person sees.
Because sometimes the person doing the work sees something completely different from the person designing the process.
He connected that same principle to product development. Organisations introduce new tools and updates because someone believes they will improve the operation. Then the people who actually have to use them discover that they don't. Why? Because nobody asked them. Technology entered the conversation too late.
That might be one of the simplest explanations for why so many digital transformation projects struggle. We design technology for operations without spending enough time with the people actually operating.
The Operation Is More Than the Scorecard
Near the end of the conversation, Denz was asked what he believes about operations that some executives might disagree with. His answer returned to people.
He has seen organisations lean heavily toward financial decisions — particularly when executives don't come from an operational background. Of course cost matters. But optimising the financial side while neglecting the people running the operation eventually creates another cost.
People leave. Knowledge disappears. Trust declines. Execution suffers. And suddenly the numbers that looked so good begin moving in the wrong direction.
The health of an operation isn't only visible in its KPIs. It's visible in the conversations happening when nobody is looking at the dashboard. It's visible in whether people accept accountability or immediately defend themselves. It's visible in whether managers have to attend every meeting. It's visible in whether people trust a promise. And it's visible in whether technology gives people more capacity — or consumes it.
Maybe the question leaders should ask isn't only: Are our numbers green? Maybe they should also walk into the operation and ask: What would I see here today that won't appear on my dashboard until three months from now?