# Who actually drives production in your business [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-13 updated: 2026-10-13 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Organization source booklet: [The Three Hats](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/three-hats) Every business has someone who decides what goes out today and in what order, and who is measured by what actually came out. When nobody wears that hat, production happens with nobody aiming it. Every business has someone who causes production to happen, and that can be somebody other than the hardest worker. The booklet calls this role the **Product Officer**: the one who decides what goes out today and in what order, and who is measured by what actually came out. Hours worked do not count. ## The one who causes production to happen Three hats, the booklet's word for three roles a person takes on, run in every business, even a business of one. The Product Officer is the first, and the question this hat asks is what went out today. According to the source, this is the one who controls the business and operates it, and the people in it, to get production. Read the wording closely. The post belongs to whoever causes production to happen. Whoever does the producing holds a different role, and the booklet treats that distinction as the heart of the post. A mechanic produces. At a garage, the Product Officer is whoever picks the three cars that come in today and the order they are worked on. So the post turns up at every level of a business. With ten people, each area's head holds it for that area. With one person, it is you, and the Executive Director's hat, the one that coordinates all three, is yours as well. The booklet calls this a perfectly normal double hat. Take a dental practice with six staff. The hats have started to separate there, and the senior dentist is the Product Officer. In a smaller business, the person who runs the place usually wears this hat as well. What matters, according to the booklet, is whether somebody holds the hats deliberately or whether they happen by accident. ## Producing and deciding Picture a café. The fastest barista on the shift makes the most drinks, yet may not be the Product Officer. On that shift, the Product Officer is whoever watches the queue and chooses what gets made first. Or a studio of two, where one person answers clients and the other designs. The Product Officer is whoever sets how many projects come in this month, even if they do less of the designing. And the opposite case: an owner who sinks into execution all day and decides nothing. The booklet says this person wears an operator's hat. Production happens, and nobody is aiming it. All three businesses have plenty of work going on. What differs is whether somebody points it. ## The number that measures this hat This hat has a clear measure, and the booklet gives that as one reason it is the easiest of the three to run. The source ties production to each area's gross statistics and to the valuable final products of the business. In plain terms, you count what came out of each area this week. You do not count the hours you worked, and you do not count how busy it felt. At a garage the number is cars handed over and paid for this week. A car that came in does not count. At a clinic it is treatments delivered and completed, and a patient who booked and never turned up is not production. The booklet warns about a familiar mistake here. If the number you follow measures effort, you are measuring the wrong hat. The right number is a result. "How hard we worked" always looks good, so you can never learn from it what went out. This is what failure of the hat looks like: the whole team is very busy, and nobody can name what went out this week. ## What this hat leaves to the other two The booklet also spells out what falls outside this hat, because it prevents confusion later. The Product Officer does not build the foundation the business runs on, does not train the team from scratch, and does not maintain what wears out. All of that belongs to the other two hats: the Organizing Officer, who arranges the flow, and the Establishment Officer, who builds and maintains the foundation. The reason is practical. In the production hat your instinct is now. That instinct is what wrecks foundation, since the foundation can always wait another day. Suppose an owner who takes on a large expense in a strong month and cuts training in a weak one. The booklet traces both decisions to the production hat, and both belong to a different hat. Later the booklet makes this concrete. When you have just closed a deal and the month feels strong, you are not the one who should be deciding a large expense in infrastructure or training from that hat. The same logic explains why this hat wins so easily. When you do not tell the hats apart, you decide by what is urgent, and the urgent thing is always production. ## What the booklet has on this This chapter of the booklet has two exercises, a spot-it and a do-it exercise. After it, the booklet moves on to the other two hats and to what happens to a business when one of the three is missing. A business can be busy from morning to night and still have nobody aiming production. What counts is whether someone decides what goes out, and whether someone counts what went out at the end. - [The Three Hats](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/three-hats): Three names for three jobs, and a diagnosis that tells you which one is missing in your business today. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/who-really-drives-production) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/who-really-drives-production)