FIX THE WORK BY RICHARD SITES

Seven Principles That Get Training Shipped

Fix the Work is seven principles for closing the gap between an executive's decision and a deployed result. Written for the executive and the team building it.

The Book

 

Somewhere between the decision to build training and the day it launches, most projects lose the thread. The budget gets spent. The course ships. Nobody's quite sure what difference it made.

That's not a content problem. It's a friction problem — the handoffs that stall, the reviews that never end, the decisions that sit on someone's desk while the window to matter closes. Fix the Work is seven principles for closing that gap, written in the same direct, no-theory voice as everything else Richard Sites has built. Not best practices. Not a model. A way to get the right work done at the right time, with the least amount of was

What’s Inside:

The Seven Principles

Principle

The Line

What It Diagnoses

Proactivity Stalled work is more expensive than bad work. Decisions sitting on a desk instead of moving.
Originality If it exists, it’s not your job to rebuild it. Time burned reinventing solutions that already exist.
Urgency Timeliness beats perfection, every time. Design cycles that outlast the business window they were meant to serve.
Collaboration No sponsor, no solution. Projects moving without real executive backing.
Punctuality Deadlines aren’t constraints — they’re catalysts. Open-ended timelines that drift into theater.
Durability Stop building monuments. Content built to last forever that goes stale in months.
Simplicity Complexity is a tax. Utility is the goal. Solutions more complicated than the problem required.

What You'll Be Able to Do

 
  • Score a training initiative in minutes, using a method built for a business leader, not a training professional.

  • Tell the difference between a project that's on track and one that's quietly drifting, before the invoice arrives.

  • Talk to your L&D team about outcomes instead of activity — hours logged, modules built, dates hit.

  • Stay in the room on training decisions instead of delegating the whole conversation away.

Who Is This For

The Executive — the CEO, COO, or VP deciding whether training happens at all. Your job is clarity, sponsorship, deadlines, and cutting complexity before it starts.

The Training Leader — the head of L&D or anyone building it. Your job is speed, smart use of what already exists, and shipping something useful instead of something perfect.

Most training advice picks one of these readers and ignores the other. This book assumes you need both in the room, because the friction lives in the handoff between them.