When I was CFO at TravelPerk, I named my team the Pit Crew. Finance, legal, and data. Not because I was particularly into Formula 1 (though that came later). Because the metaphor captured something I believed about what operational teams should actually do.
The vision had two parts. One: help the driver win the race. Make the internal machinery work so well that the CEO and the leadership team can focus on driving. Two: jump into the car and be the driver. Don't just support the business. Deliver material impact to it.
Most operational leaders get stuck on part one. They build efficient, reliable teams that keep the lights on. Finance closes the books on time. Legal reviews contracts without bottlenecks. Data produces dashboards people actually use. That's valuable. But it's not enough. The best operators I've worked with don't just run their function. They design their role around the thing the company needs most, whether or not it sits in their job description.
Over a couple of years at TravelPerk, the Pit Crew grew. First corporate development, because COVID had created an acquisition opportunity we couldn't ignore. Then HR, which we restructured into People Operations because the function wasn't fit for the company we were becoming. Then, eventually, all of customer support... hundreds of travel agents serving our customers. The original Pit Crew of finance, legal, and data had expanded into what was effectively a COO function, but it happened one gap at a time.
I wrote a proposal formalising it. The cheeky part was that I also wrote the rules of engagement. Here's what stays with the CEO: leadership team management, strategy ownership, board management, external-facing responsibilities. Here's what the expanded Pit Crew owns: everything that makes the internal engine run, plus the strategic bets. I even proposed the financial KPIs I'd be accountable for. A burn multiple of 3. Never dropping below 12 months of runway.
To TravelPerk's credit, the culture allowed this. Roles were fungible. If you saw a gap and could make the case, you could step into it. Nobody was boxed by their title. That environment is rarer than it sounds, and it's something I've tried to carry into everything I've built since.
Looking back, what made each expansion work wasn't the proposal. It was that I'd framed every one around what the company needed, not what I wanted to do. Every proposal answered the question "how does this help TK win?" before it answered "how does this expand my scope?" The expansion was a consequence, not a goal. Corporate development because there was an acquisition-led growth opportunity nobody else was driving. People Ops because the function was failing the business. Customer support because the travel agents were the front line of our brand and they needed operational leadership. None of it was a land grab. All of it was "this needs doing, and I can do it."
I think about this constantly now that I'm on the other side.
At readywhen.ai, I'm the CEO. My co-founder Sancar is driving GTM. And the thing that keeps surprising me is that the team is running their own version of the Pit Crew playbook without being asked. People step into operations gaps before they're visible. Research gets shaped strategically, not just executed. Architectural calls get made that are product decisions, not just engineering ones. Nobody is staying in their lane because nobody has a lane. They're designing their roles around what the company needs most, exactly the way I argued operators should at TravelPerk.
The difference is that at TravelPerk I had to write a document to make the case for each expansion. At ten people, with a team that's been through Oliva's full arc together, it's just how things work. The Pit Crew playbook doesn't need a document when the whole team already thinks like a pit crew.
The uncomfortable inversion is this: I spent years expanding my own scope by identifying gaps and stepping into them. Now I'm the CEO, and the hardest version of the same principle is letting go. Trusting that the people around you are designing their roles better than you could design them. The Pit Crew metaphor assumed there was one driver. The truth is that in a small, high-trust team, everyone is driving and everyone is crew. Simultaneously.
I'll leave you with something a mentor told me years ago that I didn't fully understand until now: "The best teams don't need someone to define their roles. They need someone to stop defining them."
The role always follows the work. Get out of the way.