Why Better Leadership Without Better Systems Never Sticks
Behavior change collapses back to the process it lives inside. The fix is to improve both at the same time.
Think Better Business
Turn Organizational Chaos Into Clarity, Alignment, and Sustainable Performance.
5L Performance Group helps owners and leadership teams strengthen the people, strategy, processes, and operating systems their organizations need to grow without everything depending on one person.
The 5L Operating System
Trusted by leaders at
Recognize the Problem
When Growth Starts Creating More Complexity Than Progress
Growth is good news, until the way you've always worked stops working. If any of these sound familiar, the problem isn't your people. It's the absence of a system. Check the ones that sound familiar.
The 5L Approach
One System for Stronger Leadership and Better Organizational Performance
5L combines leadership behavior, strategic alignment, operational discipline, and practical implementation in a single framework: the 5L Operating System. Five Leadership Principles form the foundation. Five Operational Levers build on it. The L-evate Assessment shows you where to start.
The result
Sustainable Performance
Five leversFive principlesExplore the system
Select any principle or lever to see what it means and why it matters. The principles describe how 5L leaders think and work with people. The levers describe where the organization must improve. Together, they form the 5L Operating System.
Think Better Business.
Ideas, stories & field notes from 5L
- 01The Strategy That Never Made It Into Daily WorkStrategy
- 02Solve It Once: Root Cause Over Recurring FirefightsProblem Solving
- 03The Daily Rhythm That Ends the 4 p.m. ScrambleDaily Management
Watch
Leadership
The $2 Raise
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The Languishing Tell
Leadership
Moving Past “Because I Said So”
Explore all Insights →New stories and clips produced by FASTER studios.
How the Process Works
A Clear Path From Chaos to a System That Lasts
1
Assess with L-evate
Start with our organizational health assessment to see your current reality clearly.
2
Identify the gaps
Pinpoint the most consequential gaps across the Five Operational Levers.
3
Build the roadmap
Prioritize a practical improvement roadmap, sequenced for your capacity and goals.
4
Coach and implement
Coach leaders and implement practical solutions alongside your team, not from the sidelines.
5
Measure and sustain
Measure progress and build systems that keep working after we're gone.
Where Are You Starting From?
Two Ways In. One System.
Most leaders arrive at 5L feeling one of these two pressures first. Both paths lead into the same 5L Operating System, because leadership and operations only work when they work together.
Path One
"I need stronger leadership and team alignment."
Your team is capable, but trust is thin, meetings drift, and leaders aren't moving in the same direction. You're carrying more than your share.
- Executive and leadership coaching
- Leadership team development
- Strategy development and deployment
- Meeting and strategic-planning facilitation
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These engagements build on the Leadership Engagement and Strategy levers, grounded in all five Leadership Principles.
Path Two
"I need better systems, processes, and execution."
Work is inconsistent, problems repeat, and growth has outpaced your processes. Strategy exists, but it never reaches the daily work.
- Lean process improvement
- Daily management and governance routines
- Operating-system implementation
- Leadership training and workshops
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These engagements build on the Problem Solving, Daily Management, and Infrastructure levers, applied through Lean discipline.
Why 5L
Experience, Rigor, and a System That Connects It All
Executive-level experience
Decades of senior leadership and strategic experience across diverse business functions.
Lean rigor
Deep operational-improvement discipline rooted in proven Lean tools, methods, and principles.
A proprietary diagnostic
The L-evate organizational-health assessment shows exactly where you stand and where to focus.
Leadership meets systems
A framework that connects leadership behavior with business systems, because neither works alone.
Implementation, not advice
We work alongside your team to put changes in place, not just recommend them.
Results
Proof, Not Promises
Every result we publish includes the challenge, what we found, what changed, the measurable outcome, and the timeframe, with client permission.
With their guidance, we not only more than doubled our sales but also significantly improved our profit margins. They didn’t just improve our company; they helped us rediscover our vision.
“The ideal transformational leader… leads by seeking to understand.”
“Full of insight… great questions that helped guide me along.”
The People Behind 5L
Two Experts. One Shared System.
Rick Faber and Jesse DePriest built 5L around a simple conviction: organizations perform when leadership behavior and business systems improve together.
Rick Faber
Executive Leadership & Strategy
Rick brings decades of executive leadership across diverse business functions. He works with owners and leadership teams on strategic alignment, organizational behavior, sales leadership, and the coaching that turns individual leaders into a unified team.
Jesse DePriest
Lean Leadership & Operational Excellence
Jesse is a Lean leadership practitioner, teacher, and coach focused on operational excellence, process improvement, systems thinking, and implementation, helping teams solve root problems and build a culture of continuous improvement.
Find Out What Is Holding Your Organization Back.
Start with a clear picture of your organization's health. It takes minutes, and it changes the conversation.