You Can’t Fix What You Can’t Measure
with Mark Jehning
The Corvus Effect / Episode 86
Released: December 1, 2025
Overview
Mark Jehning founded Acuity Dynamics — named for keenness of vision in dynamic environments — after 35 years that ran from McDonnell Douglas Space Systems and the space shuttle’s solid rocket booster to Arthur Andersen and Compaq. His engagement model is the one most consultants refuse: performance-based, where Mark negotiates a percentage of the measurable savings he helps clients achieve. This conversation is about why most organizations are buried in tribal knowledge they’ve never documented, the difference between leading and lagging indicators, and what founders should actually see on their Monday morning dashboard.
About Mark Jehning
Mark Jehning is the founder and CEO of Acuity Dynamics, with 35+ years across aerospace, Fortune 500 consulting, and operational performance management. He brings business process optimization to order-to-cash and product development through operational assessments, process mapping, and performance-based engagements that align his outcomes with the client’s.
Listen to the Full Episode
Key Takeaways
1. Performance-based engagement
Most consultants bill time and materials without guaranteeing results — Mark negotiates a percentage of the measurable savings he helps clients achieve, which means he only wins when the client wins. His metric-driven framework identifies the low-hanging fruit first — the constraints easiest to remove with the highest impact — so the returns are rapid and measurable. The model isn’t an accommodation; it’s the alignment that fixes the incentive problem most consulting engagements have.
2. Leading indicators and the Monday morning dashboard
Most organizations measure process time as a lagging indicator — waiting until activities complete to calculate how long they took. Mark’s framework focuses on leading indicators by measuring turnover rate: current workload divided by throughput for any given period, which reveals constraints while they’re still manageable. The Monday morning dashboard is the practical version — graphical and numerical, so within minutes an owner can spot which subprocess went the wrong way and focus scarce resources on it before it becomes a crisis.
3. Releasing tribal knowledge dependency
Most organizations are one or two key people away from catastrophe because the critical operational knowledge lives in individuals’ heads, not the company’s documentation. Mark turns tribal knowledge into institutional knowledge through operational assessments and SOPs, so the work doesn’t disappear when the person does. The result is operational independence — the founder can step away from day-to-day operations and the business keeps running.