If you've seen Caddyshack, you may remember a scene where Ty Webb takes Lacey Underall back to his place and she's snooping through his things.
Lacey: “Here's an uncashed check for $70,000.”
Ty: “Keep it.”
It's a subtly funny scene that makes me laugh every time. So much wealth, so little appreciation for $70k.
Keep it.
Can you relate? Me neither.
And yet I watch Microsoft partners do their own version of this constantly. Not with uncashed checks, but with simple operational changes they could make today to keep more of their margin and just … don't.
For a 25-consultant practice, the checks can get big fast.
The $1 million check
Utilization. Poor resource planning, assigned work that isn't actionable, delayed starts because project data is stale, internal meetings created to compensate for systems that don't provide a shared, trustworthy view of the work.
The difference between running a 25-consultant team at 70% and 80% utilization is roughly $1 million a year in margin. Ten points. A million dollars. It's the biggest number in delivery and the least visible. Because it's a gradual leak and often a month-end “surprise.” By then, the hours are gone.
The $375,000 check
Give-backs. Undetected scope creep, over-servicing, undisciplined meeting attendance, Sales and Delivery teams working from different assumptions.
Credits. Free hours. “We'll just eat that one.” Move a practice down 5 points in give-backs and that's about $375,000 a year on work your team already performed and you already paid them to do.
That isn't new revenue. It's a revenue check you already earned but failed to cash.
The $56,000 check
A good example of both? Weekly status meetings (my absolute pet peeve).
Quick math for a 40-week project.
Status quo: a PM and two consultants in a weekly 60-minute customer status meeting, plus at least the same crew (usually with a developer added for good measure) in a 60-minute internal sync. At $225/hour, that's $63,000 of non-outcome-producing hours. Per project.
The ModernOps way: the data is usable, trusted, and current, so only the PM attends the customer status (15 minutes), and the internal sync is a 15-minute PM-and-Lead check-in. Grand total per SOW: $6,750.
From $63,000 to under $7,000. An 89% cut — about $56,000 back on a single project.
And here's why one meeting shows up in both leaks above: every one of those hours goes one of two ways. Either it's padded into the SOW and the client pays to watch people sit in a meeting (so their budget and their trust both erode) or it's eaten as unbillable overhead, a straight hit to utilization. Same hours. Two ways to leak.
How many checks are sitting in your drawer?
That's the point.
Most margin leaks don't look like six-figure problems when you encounter them one hour, one project, one credit or one staffing decision at a time.
But when you put a dollar figure on them, the picture changes.
You would never knowingly leave a $70,000 check sitting uncashed.
So why tolerate a $375,000 margin leak because it happens across dozens of projects?
Why ignore $1 million in lost capacity because it disappears a few hours at a time?
You can't fix a number you can't see. Make the leaks visible, put a dollar figure on each one, and close them one operational change at a time.
That's why I created the free ModernOps Margin Leak Assessment. Take the assessment and see where the uncashed checks may be hiding in your operation.
Then let's talk.
Because unlike Ty Webb, I'm guessing most of us aren't quite wealthy enough to say:
“Keep it.”
Find those checks. Then take them to the bank.
Revenue is closed in sales. Margin is realized in delivery.
— Let’s elevate! DGM
The math: 25 consultants, $225 blended rate, 2,080 hrs/yr, 85% margin on recovered dollars (your people are already on payroll). Utilization gap on a 25-person team; give-backs = a 5-point reduction on ~$8.8M service revenue; status meetings over a 40-week SOW. Every figure is conservative. Run the raw revenue and the numbers get bigger, not smaller.