Designed to Perform — Donny C. Nguyen

CLASS-Y: The framework I use before I say yes to a partnership.

Donny C. Nguyen — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Some of my worst partnership decisions started with good intentions.

I have confused likability with contribution, allowed excitement override due diligence, and assumed the details would sort themselves out. They did not. I have also had to look in the mirror and ask whether I was actually bringing enough to deserve the seat I wanted; that part is harder to admit, but it matters just as much.

I have even partnered with my mother-in-law. It did not end well, but that is another article.

I like working with people. A lot of good things in my life have come from the right partners and sitting at the right table. Partnership has helped me grow businesses, solve problems, and create opportunities that would have been difficult to create alone.

What I eventually realized is that I was often evaluating the wrong things because partnership conversations can become muddy very quickly. Someone has an idea, says they will work hard, and might even be someone I genuinely like.

The price of admission

Enthusiasm feels valuable because it is visible and evokes emotion. Work ethic feels valuable because it is admirable and often attributed with outcomes. Both matter, but neither one tells me whether a partnership will actually create value.

If we are building something together, I expect both of us to care, work hard, and follow through on our commitments. I do not assume that my enthusiasm is a contribution, nor do I assume that my willingness to work hard creates value. Those are simply the price of admission. The responsibility of every partner, including me, is to bring something beyond that.

The five categories

Over time, I noticed I was evaluating the same five categories over and over again. Sometimes someone brought capital. Sometimes they brought opportunities. Sometimes they had a skill set, an asset, or a network that materially improved the odds of success.

Eventually I organized those categories into a simple framework I call CLASS: Capital, Leads, Assets, Skills, and Strategic Relationships.

The Y is the yes, and that belongs to me.

CLASS-Y.

It is a little cheesy, but it works for how I think about it. More importantly, it gives me a practical way to evaluate contribution before emotions, relationships, or excitement start influencing the conversation.

Two decisions: who, and which seat

CLASS helps me make two types of decisions. First, it helps me decide who should be involved. Then it helps me decide what seat they should sit in.

The first question is whether the person is bringing something real to the opportunity. Are they bringing capital, leads, assets, skills, or strategic relationships? If not, then it probably isn't a partnership conversation yet. The idea might still be worth exploring, and the relationship may still have value, but there isn't enough contribution to justify ownership, economics, or decision rights.

The second question is what structure fits the contribution. A lot of people bring something real to an opportunity, just not something that requires ownership. They might deserve a referral fee, a project fee, a defined contractor role, an advisory position, a lender position, or a vendor relationship.

When contribution is not addressed early on, people end up in the wrong seat. Someone is granted equity because that felt like respect, not because the structure actually called for it. Someone wants decision rights because they were involved, not because they were carrying the risk. Someone is given partnership status, but what they are really bringing is a defined scope of work that should have been paid directly.

That is why I try to separate contribution from structure.

If someone brings value, the next question is not automatically, “Should they be a partner?” The better question is, “What seat matches the value they are actually bringing?”

Matching the seat to the contribution

This is not meant to be perfect, but it is a useful way to think about the conversation:

Contribution	Seat	Compensation
Capital	Investor	Preferred returns, profit participation, equity
Leads	Referral Partner	Referral fee, commission, success fee
Assets	Asset Contributor, Licensor	Lease payments, royalties, revenue share, defined returns
Skills	Contractor, Consultant, Operator	Project fee, retainer, salary, performance incentives
Strategic Relationships	Advisor, Board Member, Strategic Advisor	Advisory fee, access, occasional equity participation
System-Level Contributor (multiple CLASS categories)	Partner	Ownership, profit participation, decision rights, long-term upside

The reason I find this helpful is that most opportunities need several seats around the table, not just partners. Someone who introduces a customer may deserve a referral fee. Someone who contributes specialized expertise may deserve consulting fees. Someone who provides capital may deserve an investment return. Someone who contributes a strategic relationship may deserve an advisory role.

Those are all legitimate forms of value creation.

The mistake happens when every contribution gets pushed into the partner seat. Partnership is not the reward for being involved. It is a specific structure that combines ownership, economics, accountability, decision-making authority, and risk. In my experience, that seat is usually best reserved for people who are contributing across multiple areas of CLASS or carrying a meaningful share of the long-term responsibility for the outcome.

That does not make the other seats less important. In many cases they are actually better seats because the economics are clearer, the expectations are easier to define, and no one is trying to force ownership onto a contribution that would have been better handled another way.

The goal is not to maximize ownership. The goal is to align contribution, risk, accountability, and reward in a way that makes sense for everyone involved.

What are you actually bringing to the table?

The question at the center of all of this is simple: what are you actually bringing to the table?

Sometimes the answer is capital. That is the easiest contribution to understand because money creates options. The more interesting question is what job the money is performing inside the system. Is it funding growth? Covering a gap before revenue arrives? Reducing financing risk? Capital only becomes valuable when it changes the outcome.

Other times the contribution is leads. A lot of people know people, which is not the same thing as consistently creating qualified opportunities. A large network may look impressive, but a handful of relationships that reliably create business can be worth far more. Real lead value means you can move the business toward conversations that have a legitimate chance of delivering results.

Assets are different because they shorten the path. A property, a software platform, a customer list, a trained team, intellectual property, a proven process, or an existing business can all create leverage. The challenge is that not everything that exists is necessarily valuable. A customer list that has not been touched in years may not be much of an asset. A process nobody follows is just a document. The question is not whether something exists. The question is whether it changes the outcome.

Skills are where the conversation usually requires the most honesty. This is where most of the tension will show up in a partnership. Skills are often mingled with hours worked. A skill creates value because the opportunity performs better with it. A skill could be a functional specialty such as strategic sourcing, welding, or coding. It could also be specialized knowledge such as logistics, grant writing, or industry insights. Hours worked are important but not the same as a skill. Be mindful that confidence is not the same as competence, and theory is not the same as execution.

Strategic relationships are the final category, and they are often the most misunderstood. Everyone knows a guy. Strategic relationships are different. They are the people in your black book who answer the phone, tell you the truth, and consistently perform. A strong lender can change the structure of a deal. A reliable contractor can protect a timeline. A trusted attorney can prevent expensive mistakes. The value is not the contact itself. The value is the trust, access, credibility, and execution behind the relationship. In some opportunities, that black book is worth more than a spreadsheet full of projections.

What I listen for

When someone brings me an opportunity, these are the things I am listening for. Not to kill the excitement, but to understand the system. What does the opportunity need? What is missing? Who is responsible for what? What does each person bring that actually changes the outcome?

Those questions help separate the person from the structure, and that matters because someone can be a good person and still not be the right partner.

CLASS gives me a way to have that conversation before it gets complicated. The goal is not to make partnership cold. The goal is to make the expectations clear before ownership, economics, and decision rights are on the table.

Get the seats right before anyone sits down. Almost everything else is easier from there.

Is your business teaching people to think, or just follow rules?

Donny C. Nguyen — Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A while back, I hired a vendor to complete some work for me. After a few days passed without any scheduling update, I followed up to see where things stood. That is when I learned the work order had never moved forward because a required document was showing as unsigned in their system.

The problem was that I had already signed it.

Somewhere between my signature and their internal workflow, the software failed to register the completed document. Instead of the work being scheduled, the process simply stopped. No one called to verify whether I had signed it. No one checked the document manually. No one escalated the issue or asked whether the system was accurately reflecting reality.

From a policy standpoint, the employee may have done exactly what they were told to do. The company had a rule that work could not begin until the document was signed, and their system showed that the document was not signed.

But that is the problem.

The policy protected the company from doing unauthorized work, but it did not help the employee solve the customer's actual issue. It created a boundary, but it did not create judgment. It told the employee when to stop, but it did not tell them what to do when the system failed.

That small experience captures a larger issue inside many organizations. Policies often teach people what they cannot do, but they do not always teach people what they are responsible for accomplishing. Over time, companies can unintentionally train employees to prioritize procedural compliance over successful outcomes. And those are not the same thing.

How the layers accumulate

Most policies are created with good intentions. A company experiences a problem, someone makes a mistake, a customer complaint surfaces, or a legal concern emerges. Leadership responds by adding another rule, another approval step, or another safeguard designed to prevent the issue from happening again.

Individually, those decisions often make sense. The problem is that organizations rarely remove complexity at the same rate they add it. Layers of restriction accumulate while too little attention is given to building systems that teach decision-making, ownership, and operational judgment.

What the system teaches

Eventually, employees begin learning a very specific lesson: avoid mistakes first. That changes how people behave. Instead of focusing on solving problems, employees focus on following process. Instead of asking, “How do we accomplish the outcome?” they ask, “What am I allowed to do?”

In many companies, employees become highly educated on:

what requires approval
what creates liability
what violates policy
what should be escalated
what could get them in trouble

At the same time, they often remain unclear on:

what outcomes matter most
where they are trusted to exercise judgment
how decisions should be made
what tradeoffs leadership values
what ownership looks like in practice

The result is an organization optimized for compliance instead of performance.

Where SOPs come in

This is where SOPs become especially important. A standard operating procedure can be one of the most useful tools in a business, or it can become another organizational handcuff. The difference is whether the SOP is designed to enable performance or merely restrict deviation.

A weak SOP says, “Follow these steps.” A strong SOP says, “Here is the outcome we are trying to produce, here is the standard, here is the normal process, here is where judgment is required, and here is when to escalate.”

That difference matters. If an SOP only teaches sequence, people become task-followers. If it teaches purpose, standards, decision points, and escalation logic, people become operators.

A practical SOP should clarify:

Outcome — what result is this process supposed to produce?
Standard — what does good work look like?
Steps — what is the normal process?
Decision points — where does judgment matter?
Exceptions — what can go wrong?
Escalation — when should someone ask for help?
Authority — what can the person decide without approval?

This turns the SOP from a checklist into an enablement tool.

An SOP should not replace thinking. It should support thinking. The best SOPs create consistency without eliminating judgment. They reduce unnecessary variation while still allowing people to respond intelligently when reality does not match the procedure. That is the real test of an operating system. It should help people execute when everything goes according to plan, but it should also help them think when it does not.

Protection is not enablement

To be clear, policies matter. Organizations need boundaries, controls, and compliance systems. Without them, businesses become inconsistent, financially exposed, legally vulnerable, and operationally chaotic. But policies are only one part of a functioning business system.

Policies are protection systems. They reduce risk, create consistency, and establish boundaries. What many organizations fail to build with equal intentionality are enablement systems. Enablement systems include:

training
decision frameworks
operating principles
role clarity
escalation paths
workflows
performance metrics
feedback loops

In other words, policies tell people where the guardrails are. Enablement systems help people drive.

High-performing organizations do not just communicate restrictions. They communicate mission, priorities, standards, and authority. Employees understand not only what they cannot do, but also what they are trusted to own.

The goal of a business is not simply to prevent failure. It is to consistently produce successful outcomes. Without control, organizations become reckless. Without enablement, organizations become bureaucratic. One creates chaos, while the other creates paralysis.

The strongest organizations build both control and enablement. They protect the business without teaching people to hide behind the process. They create boundaries without removing judgment. They use policies, SOPs, workflows, and metrics as tools for alignment, not as substitutes for ownership.

The uncomfortable question

That is why every leadership team should periodically ask a more uncomfortable question: “Are our systems teaching people how to think, or are they only teaching people how not to get in trouble?”

Every approval layer, escalation path, policy, SOP, metric, and management response teaches employees how to operate inside the business. Whether intentional or not, the system is always training behavior.

So the real question is not whether your company has policies or procedures. Every business needs them. The better question is what those policies and procedures are producing. Are they helping people understand the outcome, exercise judgment, and move work forward? Or are they creating hesitation, dependency, and procedural paralysis?

If an employee encounters a broken process, an unusual customer issue, or a system failure tomorrow, will they know how to think through the problem and move toward resolution? Or will the work simply stop because the system told them to stop?

A business system should do more than prevent mistakes. It should help people consistently create successful outcomes. Because in the end, a system will perfectly deliver what it was designed to deliver.

Are you fixing yourself, or fixing the business?

Donny C. Nguyen — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When your business is running you instead of the other way around, what's your first instinct… do you work on yourself, or do you look at how the business is actually set up?

That question matters more than most owners realize, because it usually determines whether you solve the problem or just manage around it. There's a lot of overlap in how people talk about coaching and consulting, but they operate at two very different levels.

Two different levels

Coaching is focused on the individual. It helps you think more clearly, lead more effectively, and make better decisions. It builds awareness and accountability so you can operate at a higher level personally.

Consulting is focused on the business. It examines how your company is structured, how work gets done, and why the results you're seeing keep showing up the way they do.

The default assumption

Where things go sideways is when business pressure shows up and the default assumption is that the owner needs to improve.

Growth starts to slow, even though sales are growing. Everyone feels busy, yet productivity doesn't match the effort. In that moment, the instinct is to turn inward and ask, “What do I need to do better?”

Sometimes that's the right question. But often, it isn't the most useful one because many of these issues are not rooted in personal capability. They are rooted in how the business is designed to operate.

You can become a better leader, communicate more clearly, and hold people more accountable, but if the structure underneath all of that hasn't changed, the business tends to settle back into the same patterns. It might improve temporarily, but it won't sustain.

That's the difference most owners feel but can't quite articulate.

Coaching helps you perform better inside the business.
Consulting helps the business perform better without relying on you.

Which one you need

Both have a place. If you're navigating leadership challenges, making complex decisions, or trying to elevate how you show up, coaching is a strong investment.

But if you're dealing with persistent friction in growth, execution, or financial performance, that's usually not about effort or mindset. It's about how the business is fundamentally set up to operate.

A different type of intervention is needed.

A good consultant doesn't just give advice. They step into the business, identify where things are breaking down, and restructure how it runs so that results become more consistent and less dependent on constant oversight.

Assess what's actually happening

If you're trying to figure out which direction to go, take a step back and assess what's actually happening:

Are you the bottleneck, or is the business itself difficult to run?
When something goes wrong, do you need to step in personally to fix it?
Are your results steady, or do they fluctuate based on how involved you are?

Those answers will point you in the right direction.

At a certain stage, growth stops responding to more effort and only to better design and once that clicks, the question shifts from “How do I get better?” to “What needs to change so this business can actually perform the way I want it to?”