Diane Integrates, LLC

Imagine turning off your computer on Friday afternoon...and not turning it on over the weekend.

More than that, you are actually feeling great about where things stand.

Plus:
  - No constantly putting out fires.
  - No revolving door for top talent.
  - No major crossed wires with your CEO.

Sounds pretty great, right?

But you’ve tried time management hacks, technology tools, the latest leadership strategies…and they just didn’t work.

Perhaps you think if you just work harder or read another business book, you’ll have the answers. 

The truth is, you are already working harder than you should, and more theory isn’t going to cut it. 

Here’s the thing:

The best people to help you see into your blind spots (which we all have) and overcome your challenges are your peers. Other experts who have already been through what you are dealing with today.

So here’s an alternate way.

Skip trying to figure out how to apply generic advice to your situation or customize a tool so that it works for you.

Instead, get real-time help with your specific challenges from successful COOs/Second-in-Commands in a virtual peer group setting.

Now, you may be thinking, “How do I know this will work?”

Simple.

Because the COOs/Second-in-Commands in the group get it & they have proven tactics & best practices to share.

Ones they have used to overcome similar challenges -- including those from leading business operating systems that have helped thousands and thousands of companies scale.

You get personalized feedback on the problem or challenge you're currently facing during our live 60-min Zoom sessions.

It’s 2x per month with max 4 people per group, so you always get the time for your stuff.

To top it all off, you also get access to a private LinkedIn group where you and the other group members can connect and support each other between meetings.

Want to know more?

Great.

DM me “RELIEF” and I’ll send you the details.

COO/Second-in-Command Coach

Vistage Worldwide, Inc.

Studies show that replacing an employee costs 1.5-2X their annual salary.

If you pay your managers $65k p/yr.

That’s $97,500 - $130,000 lost every time one leaves.

When turnover is high, the avalanche quickly destroys profit margins.

You probably offer a good salary+benefits & don’t have a toxic culture.

This used to be more than enough.

But these days, it’s all about the intangibles.

Feeling heard & respected, making an impact & opportunities to grow.

That’s why this topic pops up whenever you get COOs in a room together.

Everyone is worried about losing their best people.

This is where the “Power Thank You” comes in.

These sincere, specific, timely, & public thank yous:

  - Make employees feel appreciated when they do great work. This leads to them naturally doing more.
  - Show what you value, so people understand what’s expected (and do it).
  - Encourage people to thank each other more, so you build a healthy culture that makes even the highest performers want to stay.

I used this strategy myself when building high-performing project teams.

And our perfect evaluation scores helped the company win new contracts.

It also enabled other peer group members to get employees engaged, so deadlines were met & quality standards maintained.

Working through problems my peers were facing & helping them figure out what to do, helped me further develop my methods for interviews (improved the quality of new hires) & handling difficult employee conversations.

As a Vistage Trusted Advisor, I am surrounded by people who are like my clients or who are serving businesses like my clients.

Because of our different roles & industries, I’m exposed to situations I wouldn’t usually deal with & helping people work through pains I wouldn’t normally experience.

Like strategies for managing health insurance costs while increasing the number of plans so employees have the coverage they need & don’t jump to another company.

All of which helps me better help my clients.

Vistage Trusted Advisor (TA) Member

CEOWORLD magazine

Drowning in information, yet starving for wisdom?

CEOs & COOs need a trusted news source with insights on business growth strategies, leadership, and communication. 

Enter CEOWORLD Magazine.

With 12.4+ million page views, it’s the leading business magazine written exclusively for CEOs & the C-suite.

Executive Council Member

Performance Excellence Partners, Inc,

It was January 2019 and we had missed our annual goals - again.

Our CEO was desperate.

Soon after that, I was incrementally integrating the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).

The result?

We doubled the size of the company in 3 years.

So what changed?

Previously, strategic planning sessions resulted in lengthy documents that just sat on the shared drive.

With EOS we created a brief, actionable plan that gave everyone a clear picture of what success looked like.

Clearly defined roles for the Integrator (second-in-command/COO) and Visionary (CEO) freed us to work in our strengths:

  - I led operations.
  - She was free to be the company’s big picture leader.

The Accountability Chart (functional org chart):

  - Uncovered cracks in the structure that need to be fixed for the company to grow.
  - Improved productivity and morale (because employees knew what they were supposed to do and leaders held them accountable).
  - Guided our growth by identifying priority hires so we could staff up quickly and correctly when the time came.

Employee engagement improved when we started having Quarterly Conversations where I got vulnerable, asked staff how I could better help them succeed, and then shut up and really listened.

Shifting to the L10 meeting structure was probably the biggest challenge because meetings were now spent actively figuring out solutions. No more multitasking!

But once people got it, improvements were seen in internal operations, solutioning, achieving goals, and communication.

We were all more engaged and committed to the company’s success.

I fell in love with the Integrator role & heard my calling loud and clear.

It was time for me to help other CEOs & their COOs uncover the power hidden in their relationship & streamline operations.

So that their:

  - Profit increases.
  - Customer satisfaction goes up.
  - Employees stop leaving.
  - Sales improve and revenue goes up.

And I can't help feeling that the best is yet to come.

EOS Integrator

Have you ever had to develop winning proposals for multi-million-dollar government contracts?

Because I have.
 
And it still gives me those “high school math test” type nightmares that have you waking up in a cold sweat, thanking God you’re not a teenager anymore.

It was my job to go through the solicitations and:

  - Lead the solutioning & strengths statement sessions.
  - Help tailor resumes & past performance to the opportunity.
  - Write technical approach, management, staffing, & corporate experience sections.
  - Provide feedback & edit sections written by experts.
  - Pull it all together into a compelling & compliant proposal (without exceeding incredibly tight page limits).

The stakes were always high.

The success of the company depended on these wins.

But I didn’t flinch.

Because I designed & integrated a system we could trust to get results.

That way, I could keep the team calm & collected, with each member focused on doing their best work.

The result?

   -  $35M+ in new contracts.
   -  Contracts in new agencies.
   -  An above industry average win rate for multiple years.
   -  Government evaluators called our strengths in their feedback.
 
It sounds like everything was coming up roses.
 
But that wasn’t the case.
 
There were also plenty of losses.
 
The most painful were contacts we would have won - if we had done a better job with intel gathering.
 
While frustrating & painful, these losses were necessary.
 
Because I took that experience and…

Turned it into a process for capitalizing on lessons learned that I still use today, with my clients.
 
  - I treat each negative outcome as an opportunity.
  - I use a forward focus to get people thinking differently.
  - We develop strategies to do better in the future.
 
Essentially, WE take control of our destiny.
 
Even today, I’m always told by my clients that they appreciate my positive, forward-looking approach.

Because it keeps them focused on what’s possible.

So they actually get there.

Director of Projects & Business Development

In Government Contracting, the Customer Experience is everything.

Outstanding evaluation scores (>4.5 out of 5) keep contracts coming in.

And that’s a tall order because you have to:

Exceed requirements so that it benefits the government.

It means truly understanding what matters to them & finding a way to deliver that and more (within budget & scope, of course).

How did my teams do, you ask?

Fantastic:

  - 4.9 average score
  - Perfect 5.0 for 8 of the 10 contracts
  - 4.7 average for federal prime contracts

How did we do it?

1. Asked questions to go deeper and understand the why behind each request (so we could deliver services that met these deeper needs as well).

Ex: Uncovered the bigger picture behind a request for information and designed an infographic that quickly communicated the grant programs accomplishments and made the department’s report stand out when presented to leadership.

2. Refined our work, based on realities our clients face, feedback and lessons-learned (to continually improve services).

Ex: Covered each training topic in multiple ways (so leaders could quickly scan a short document while staff had the details and hands-on support they needed to take action).

3. Continually looked for ways to save costs and innovate (to add value).

Ex: Created highlights of existing resources with clarifying information and links to go deeper instead of paying experts to develop new resources from scratch and saved enough to provide 6 bonus months of support.

4. Regularly asked our clients how we were doing and what else we could do to help them succeed (and then really listened).

Ex: Developed a list of FAQs with approved responses to reduce the number of calls and emails federal staff received.

Guess what?

These tactics still work.

And I strongly believe they always will.

Senior Managing Consultant

Paltech

If you’ve read this far, you probably know that at this point in my life, I was living and breathing operations.

I’ve always been focused on finding little ways to make things better…in all aspects of life.

I can’t help it.

Whenever I see anything I’m constantly making little tweaks here and there to improve the process or results…even if just in my head.

Paltech is where that innate skill set turned into real, tangible, strategies and skills that help teams and companies succeed.

Specifically:

  - Building and leading inclusive project teams.

  - Designing, implementing, and refining solutions & processes.

  - Developing knowledge management practices and databases.

  - Helping grow the division from $2.5M to over $12M in ARR (designed solutions, wrote proposal sections, developed budgets & provided outstanding services that led directly to future work).

On top of that, being Dorothy’s second-in-command at Paltech is where I became the emotionally self-aware operations leader & coach I am today. 

She was an amazing role model and mentor. Thanks to her, I’ve:

1. Created cultures where everyone contributed & more importantly, felt valued & heard.
  - People often tell me it was the best experience of their career…even those who worked with me 20 years ago.
  - One of my teams even won the 2009 Outstanding Contractor Award.

2. Developed an approach that includes asking customers and employees for feedback and using that feedback to improve results.

3. Used a continuous improvement strategy to deliver award-winning services that helped recipients improve their communities.

If I kept going, I’d run out of space.

But what does this have to do with YOU?

My experience shows that a solid second-in-command, well-run operations, valued staff, and incremental adjustments pay off.

Make sense?

Cool.

If you want to take your operations to the next level, shoot me a DM. Worst case scenario - you’ll have a chance to vent.

Project Manager (& Second-in-Command to Sr. VP)

Research Assessment Management

I was hired to clean up a big mess.

Dorothy, the division director, was ready to fire the entire 3-person administrative team.

Managing internal operations was taking too much time away from the service delivery and division growth work she needed to focus on.

The admins didn’t get what she needed, they had too many questions, were difficult to work with, and weren’t delivering the results she expected.

She needed a second-in-command who could:

  - Quickly pick up on what was needed and run with it.
  - Communicate it to the team effectively.
  - Provide the support needed to get results.
  - Look for ways to continuously take things to the next level.

The catch was, we were nearing the end of our contract and needed outstanding evaluation scores to make sure the contract was renewed.

Here’s how I did it:

  - Met with the admins to get their take on what was working well and what wasn’t so we could adjust.
  - Looked at how work was being distributed & identified ways to improve the process.
  - Got their input to strengthen the systems and processes I was putting in place.
  - Made improvements based on lessons learned.
  - Identified ways to add value based on available resources.

The result, a smooth running admin team that:

  - Was engaged and easier to work with.
  - Had a system and followed consistent processes.
  - Delivered results.
  - Played a key role in earning perfect evaluation scores & the contract renewal.

Why does this matter to YOU?

The existing staff delivered these results. Employees who were challenging, poor performers became engaged team members that cared about the quality of the work they were doing.

Funny thing is…

Dorothy was determined not to hire someone young. 

But she did – and we were perfect complements for each other.

We even moved to a new company (Paltech) together and achieved amazing results there.

Little did we know back then what the next 20 years would bring!

Special Assistant to the Director

Echo Electric

Now, if you've read THIS FAR, then you have to hear a story about how I started my career as an operations leader.

“Diane, you’re now in charge of managing internal operations, handling customer calls, and scheduling the service electrician.”

This is how my first operations leader role started.

There were virtually no systems and processes in place.

The owner had been doing the bare essentials while he spent his days meeting with clients and growing the business.

I was now in charge of everything & building the plane while flying it, as they say.

After figuring out the best order for completing tasks I started looking for ways to streamline operations.

I created forms, templates, and checklists & started getting the operations work done faster and with better results.

Eventually, things were running so smoothly that I started taking on additional tasks, like calculating the profit and loss on jobs.

Yet I was still done long before 5 pm. 

It was exciting when all the electricians were in the shop for the morning meeting.

And there were customer calls. 

But I was bored.

My parents suggested going back to college to get my bachelor’s degree (I already had my associate’s).

Because we now had such effective systems and processes – the timing felt right.

So I proposed we:

- Hire a skilled admin assistant.
- Cut my hours to 10 per week, after I trained her.

The cost for both of us was less than my salary.

Once she was trained, I checked in with her daily to answer questions & provide support.

About 6 months later, I was able to step out of the role completely.

Because I had coached her on how to be successful in the role.

Without this opportunity to create the entire operations system & then going back to college to strengthen my knowledge base, I’m 100% sure I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Office Manager

𝙁𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙧/𝘾𝙊𝙊 & 𝘾𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙥𝙪𝙡𝙩 𝘾𝙤𝙖𝙘𝙝 for professional service firms (accounting, marketing, law & ones running on EOS) | GovCon Business Development

Constantly responding to the demands of others and never getting to what’s on your plate?

Imagine how it would feel if you could:

- Stop jumping from fire to fire.
- Keep your top talent with proven employee-retention strategies.
- Strengthen your relationship with your CEO/Founder.
- Work directly with a coach & successful COOs/Second-in-Commands who’ve faced the same issues, and overcame them.

Think back to last year, are you still fighting the same fires you were then, teetering on the edge of burnout, and did you just miss earning your full bonus yet again?

Perhaps you think if you just work harder or read another business book, you’ll have the answers. 

The truth is, you are already working harder than you should, and more theory isn’t going to cut it. 

So here’s an alternate way.

Skip trying to figure out how to apply generic advice to your situation.

Instead, get real-time help with your specific challenges from other COOs/Second-in-Commands & me.

And learn to speak “Business Owner” so your ideas are heard & you get the info you need.

Now, this is not just coaching on “leadership” you’ve seen before.

We work live on YOUR stuff at every session so you are equipped to:

Integrate proven tactics to improve operations & stop losing $50,000+ every year in hidden costs (because everyone knows who is doing what & why).

Keep your best people (saving you $75,000+ per mid-level employee you keep).

Wow your current CEO – or - land your next COO position.

To put you in the picture, I’ve been helping companies & divisions execute effectively for 25+ years. A few results I’m proud of, helping:
- A small business double in size & helping grow a division by 400%.
- A COO turn a former star employee on the brink of termination around.
- A leadership team improve productivity by 20% (no more duplication of effort or fumbled handoffs & actually getting to the important work).
   - We clarified their roles and defined how they would work together.
   - I offer this as a stand-alone package.

Now, I imagine you have a couple of questions about the Peer Group...what do I get, is it for me, etc.

DM me "RELIEF" and I'll send you the details that will answer them.

Diane Mentzer, PMP

Mark Batty

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Is your product and engineering just about coping?

Your B2B SaaS has proven demand with £1m to £5m in ARR.
As the CEO, you are expected to grow ARR, protect renewals, and keep the board calm.

But your product and engineering feel stretched and unpredictable.
You see this regularly:

✗ Key renewals or expansions at risk due to product gaps or incidents.
✗ Roadmap dates slip and people quietly stop believing the plan.
✗ Sales promise features that the team cannot reliably deliver.
✗ Engineers spend more time firefighting than moving the roadmap.
✗ Escalations from strategic customers still land on your desk.

These are signs that product and engineering are out of step with your commercial plans.
With over 30 years in B2B product and engineering, this is where I can help.

I help you stabilise delivery, protect and grow NRR and get ready for your next stage of growth.
Outcomes you can expect include:

✓ Roadmaps linked to renewals, ARR priorities, and runway.
✓ Planning and prioritisation that make delivery realistic and visible.
✓ Product changes that de risk renewals and unlock planned expansion.
✓ Structure, practices and foundations that let people ship, not burn out.
✓ Stronger leadership so product and engineering become self-sufficient.

The result is fewer surprises, stronger NRR, and a calmer, more predictable roadmap.
If this sounds familiar, send me a message, no obligation, no pitch.

Providing commercially focused technical leadership as a fractional CTO, guiding early-stage organisations to align business goals with product development and customer experience, driving the growth of their software enabled solutions.

Schrodinger’s CTO: You Have a CTO…and You Don’t

In many early-growth B2B companies, the CTO is your best engineer with a new title.

On paper (or org chart) you have a CTO.
But when you peek inside, you find something else.

Common patterns you’ll see:
- Still coding 80%+ of time, not leading the business forward.
- Plans driven by sprints and tickets, not renewals and expansions.
- Roadmap led by best-guess features, not revenue-critical outcomes.
- Architecture and quality treated as firefighting, not a scaling strategy.
- Cost rising to fight incidents and tech debt, not to build leverage.

This is not about blame. They are usually strong engineers doing their best.
But it is a different job: commercial, cross-functional, board-facing, and often lonely.

The real risk is the gap it leaves.
No one truly owns the link between customers, roadmap, risk, and revenue.

Questions worth asking:
- Who turns customer and usage insight into product bets sales can commit to?
- Who connects roadmap, capacity, risk, and revenue in a way the board can trust?
- If a critical renewal or expansion was at risk, who do you want next to you?

The answers tell you whether you have a commercially focused, strategic CTO.
Or a very capable engineer who feels alone, under pressure, and in need of support.

Curious what others are seeing?

P.S. I’ve added info about Schrodinger in the first comment.

I make your delivery predictable, your customers stay & spend more, & your board excited | UK Fractional CTO/CPTO for B2B SaaS at £1m–£5m ARR

Text image with title "Schrodinger's CTO" and footer "Senior engineer or strategic leader?"

The image is a transparent box with two people inside, one is a developer using a laptop, one is a CTO giving a talk/presentation.

The PRIMARY job of a CTO is…
… to ensure technology drives commercial success.

Technology is not the product.
The product is not the end goal.

The goal is commercial outcomes.
Technology enables the product to deliver them.

How does a growing B2B SaaS do that?
By aligning product and engineering with demand.

Here’s a simple framework I use:

↳ Ship on time: limit WIP, simplify process with light guardrails, build predictable release rhythm.

↳ Protect ARR: improve onboarding flow, reduce time to first value, make support effortless.

↳ Grow NRR: prioritise renewals and expansion, close product gaps, improve product reliability.

↳ Scale efficiently: clarify ownership, fix critical tech debt, invest in stability and performance.

I regularly see teams wording harder than ever.
But customers are still leaving or spending less.

This issue is never effort.
It’s misalignment and it’s killing your growth.

If you could fix one thing, what would it be?
Let me know and I’ll share some targeted tips 👇

Helping SaaS CEOs cut churn & drive expansion | Customer retention & NRR growth strategy | Fractional CTO/CPTO for UK B2B SaaS at £1m-£5m ARR

A text image saying:

"A CTO must lead with strategic intent to ensure technology drives commercial success"

Ship on time. Protect ARR. Grow NRR. Scale efficiently.

I have over 30 years of experience.

From the birth of the world wide web
to the current explosion of AI.

In my software engineering days
I twiddled bits in assembler and C.

In my corporate management days
I managed teams in telecom OSS and BSS.

In my strategic leadership days,
I led start-ups to first revenue and beyond.

And today I help founders of B2B/SaaS
who struggle with early growth and scaling.

I’m sure you’ll agree, all of these are
professional, responsible, and accountable.

So, does my new profile picture below
reflect the work I do and the person I am?

A funny profile picture of me wearing silly googly eye glasses.

Are your SaaS customers leaving?
Here are 5 steps to make them stay – and spend more!

Customer churn and spend contraction quietly erode ARR and NRR.
They are signs that product and engineering are out of sync with the business: 

 ❌ Roadmap slips undermine sales and damage trust with the board.
 ❌ Renewals depend on future wishful promises, not current value.
 ❌ Engineering spend rises faster than visible revenue impact.
 ❌ One or two senior people become constant bottlenecks.
 ❌ Expansion stalls after rollout as usage falls away.
 
Left alone, they compound, month after month.
Here are 5 steps to keep your customers, and make them spend more:
 
 1️⃣ Make commitments credible:
 ↳ Limit work in progress so teams focus and finish what they start.
 ↳ Define clear commitment levels so sales know what is locked.
 
 2️⃣ Protect renewals first:
 ↳ Fix reliability and product gaps blocking value for at-risk customers.
 ↳ Track usage so renewals show current value, not promises.
 
 3️⃣ Link engineering to revenue outcomes:
 ↳ Tie roadmap initiatives to NRR, margins, and key customer retention.
 ↳ Create a shared view that commercial and delivery review together.
 
 4️⃣ Reduce founder and hero bottlenecks:
 ↳ Distribute ownership and build capability so decisions move faster.
 ↳ Establish patterns and defaults to reduce what needs deciding.
 
 5️⃣ Design onboarding and product for retention:
 ↳ Get target users to first value within one session.
 ↳ Track which behaviours predict renewal and expansion, then optimise.
 
 A strong focus on just one step can shift NRR in the next quarter.
 Which one would you focus on, and why?

An image of a customer running away from a SaaS product, carry a bag of money.

NRR is not just a financial metric.
It’s the power rating of your SaaS.

Most leaders treat NRR like a tick box.
They check it. Worry about it. Then move on.

The best companies use NRR differently.
They use it as a goal for product and engineering.

Why? Because NRR is the ability of your product
↳ to continuously deliver compounding value.

Here is what usually happens in early-growth SaaS:
→ CS owns renewals, product owns features.
→ Engineering owns tech and tickets.
→ Usage drops and no one knows why.
→ NRR is reactive lagging, not proactive leading.

But you can start fixing this in 4 steps:

1. Protect renewals first:
🔹List renewals due in the next two quarters.
🔹For each one, ask what gap or issue is putting it at risk.
🔹Allocate engineering time to close those gaps before new features.

2. Run monthly reviews:
🔹Bring CS, product, and engineering together.
🔹Review accounts, usage patterns, and current priorities.
🔹End with clear actions of what to save, expand, and build.

3. Design onboarding for expansion:
🔹Identify the behaviours of best customers before they expand.
🔹Redesign onboarding to trigger those behaviours early in usage.
🔹Track time to value as a leading signal of future NRR.

4. Connect the roadmap to revenue outcomes:
🔹Stop building from a roadmap wish list.
🔹Link priorities to specific retention or expansion goals.
🔹Don’t chase noise, focus on clear revenue signals.

If you do this, NRR stops being a finance report metric.
It becomes the driving force behind your growth.

Which of the steps would you start with? Why?

A quote in a text image:

"
NRR is the power rating of
your SaaS growth engine
Mark Batty


Is the word “shit” ok in my profile banner?

I would feel uncomfortable with other profanities.
But context is everything, right? Check my banner.

I could use censoring like sh*t or similar.
Or are both forms unacceptable on LinkedIn?

Very interested to hear your thoughts on this.

The author can see how you vote. Learn more

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The Battle

Diane Mentzer, PMP

Mark Batty

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The Battle

Diane Mentzer, PMP

Mark Batty

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

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