Operational Velocity
Operational Velocity is a podcast about the operating system that converts inputs into cash, decisions into margin, and operational discipline into returns that compound over time. This series is built around one key thesis: the way a business operates determines what it returns. The show works through four main lenses: 1) value creation through operations, 2) operations-first leaders, 3) technology as operational leverage, and 4) operating systems. Each lens is a different way of seeing the same truth; every financial metric you care about has an operational driver sitting upstream of it. In essence, EBITDA margin, free cash flow, and return on capital employed are all operational outcomes. This series is hosted by Gautam Basu (PhD, MBA).
Operational Velocity
Latest Episodes
Ep 15. Aravind Eye Care: Two Tables, One Surgeon, 8x Throughput
An eye surgeon in southern India sits between two operating tables. She finishes one cataract operation, turns ninety degrees, and starts the next on a patient who is already prepped and waiting. Six to eight operations an hour, against a conve...
Ep 14: The Wrench in the Machine: Technology as Operational Leverage
Technology doesn't create value by existing in your business. It creates value when deployed against a specific constraint, with a defined metric, and someone accountable for delivering it. In this episode, Gautam Basu draws a hard line between...
Ep 13. Tim Cook's 15x Velocity Machine at Apple
Tim Cook arrived at Apple in March 1998 and inventory went from about a month to about six days. Almost nobody knows it's in Apple's own 10-K. The company disclosed days of supply in inventory as a line item: 31 days in FY1997, 6 days in FY1998...
Ep 12. Kit Lisle Interview: Insights from Private Equity Operators, TheOperators.pe
Thirty years in the private equity ecosystem, most people accumulate a network in that time. Kit Lisle built a room. Mr. Lisle spent eight years as a US Army Military Intelligence officer, including a posting at the National Military Joint Inte...
Ep 11. John Little: The Man who Proved Time is Money, Little's Law
In 1961, a young professor published a five-page proof of a formula everyone used but no one had verified: L = λW. The number of things in a system equals the rate they arrive times the time they spend inside. It looked like a footnote. It turn...