For the CEO or CTO who owns the date
The program is off track.
I get it delivering.
Deadlines, goals, deliverables, and the metric that decides success — reset from inside the work. Not from another report.
I’m Steve Chandler, ReleaseGenius. Thirty years inside complex product and manufacturing systems at five global food and consumer companies. I’m brought in when the organization has already decided it cannot be done.
The break
You do not need a diagnosis of culture. You need the program to produce the result.
A critical program is late. The status report is still green. The deliverable is not in hand. The goal has drifted off the real constraint. The metric everyone manages is not the metric that decides whether you ship.
That is not a people problem. More effort will not fix it. Another alignment meeting will not fix it. The system producing the miss has to change — from the inside, where the date is actually decided.
| 01 | Deadline | The date keeps moving because the constraint was never in the plan. |
| 02 | Goal | The target no longer matches what the system can actually do. |
| 03 | Deliverable | Work is described as done. It is not done. |
| 04 | Metric | The dashboard reports progress. It does not report the break. |
What this is not
Not a strategy retainer. Not a facilitation. Not a report you already suspect. I work inside the program that owns the date.
The engagement
Five moves. Then your team runs it.
Clarity is fast. Execution is what makes it different. I don’t hand you a report and leave — I leave you a system your team can run.
01
Name the break
A two-week diagnostic, fixed scope. Not a study. What is actually off. What is false progress. What has to stop before more effort helps.
02
Put the constraint in the plan
Technical, process, or ownership. The limit the schedule is pretending is not there. This is where thirty years of invention shows up — as the thing that makes the date possible.
03
Rebuild execution
One owner of the date. A sequence the plant, the lab, or the team can actually run. A metric that moves only when the work moves.
04
Lead it to delivery
About 90 days. I lead remotely week to week and come on site for scheduled sprints at the points that decide the date. The engagement is judged by the result, not the readout.
05
Hand it back
Your team runs it after I leave. The owner, the sequence, and the metric stay in place — run by the people who ran them with me.
And when something new must be built and cannot fail, I architect it from the start.
The record
Proven where it had already failed, or been judged impossible.
These were not advisory assignments. They were programs under a real date, a real plant, and a constraint the existing system could not absorb. Every figure here is one I can walk you through.
Frito-Lay · Product and process
Tostitos Scoops
$1B+annual sales, one product
A three-dimensional chip the line could not make. Shape, equipment, and process invented together. Three U.S. patents. Still in market, over $1 billion a year.
Frito-Lay · Brand-scale change
Lay’s reformulation
+7%in one year
Second formula change in about fifty years on a $2.1 billion brand. Best-tasting Lay’s in consumer research. Revenue from $2.1B to $2.25B.
Frito-Lay · Under launch pressure
Reduced Fat Doritos
33%less fat
Formulation and process equipment the plants could run. Three plants built and started in 14 months on $70 million of capital. One U.S. patent and $35 million in annual sales. The constraint was removed, then commercialized.
Frito-Lay · The lines already there
Tostitos process
+25%efficiency, 30 lines
Oven redesign so new products could run on thirty lines — and the $1 billion Tostitos system got more efficient, not less.
BudBot · built from zero
Precision automation for regulated manufacturing
Fill accuracy to ±0.02 g. Two U.S. patents, 43 claims. Sold commercially at $220,000 per unit. After commissioning, the state changed the rules — I invented and prototyped an inline weigher in response.
Also on the CV: microwave dough-to-crust · commercial coffee equipment rebuild · spirits bottle model, about $1 million in tooling avoided.
Why this works
This is not advisory.
This is execution.
Most firms advise.
They analyze, facilitate, and report. They work on what is presented to them. That is not where a missed date is decided.
I work inside it.
On what is actually happening, not what is being reported. At the constraint, with the owner of the date, on the metric that decides it.
Leadership
Steve Chandler, ReleaseGenius
B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois. Executive education, Kellogg. Thirty years building, recovering, and scaling complex product systems as VP and senior director at Frito-Lay, Sara Lee, Diageo, Kellogg’s, and Starbucks. Founder of BudBot and ReleaseGenius. Six U.S. patents.
I’m brought in when
the problem is not clear, the system is not working, and failure is becoming likely.
I’m known for
seeing the constraint others miss, and reorganizing the system that is not producing the result.
I leave when
the program delivers and your team runs it without me. No handoff into a slide.
How it starts
Engage when the date is real.
If another quarter of false progress has a cost, start with a direct conversation with me. No buffer team between the insight and the action.
01
Forty-five minutes
With you, the CEO or CTO. The program, the date, what done means, what has already been tried.
02
A two-week diagnostic, fixed scope
Where it is actually breaking. What to stop. What has to be reset before more effort helps.
03
Embedded execution
Only if the program can be recovered. About 90 days of remote leadership plus scheduled on-site sprints — then your team runs it.
releasegenius.com