--- title: About Us — Persistently description: Dustin Campbell and Erik Waters built Management by Design while running Adtech Systems, where turnover fell from 25% to 1.5%. --- ![Persistently](https://www.persistently.us/hubfs/persistently-site/44fdd3d58b.png) ![Persistently](https://www.persistently.us/hubfs/persistently-site/66aed6c5bc.png) Home Why Management by Design How It Works About Us Book a Discovery Call Home Why MBD How It Works About Contact About us # From heroics to design. Our mission is to build management systems that scale with your business and the people who run it — creating clarity, consistency and capacity at every level. ![Dustin Campbell and Erik Waters, founders of Persistently.](https://www.persistently.us/hubfs/persistently-site/7e194b85ba.jpeg) Why we built this ## We couldn't hire our way out. Erik and I bought Adtech Systems and spent years running it. The first few years were a challenge because all decisions had previously routed through the former CEO and COO. We knew we were a smaller company with limited resources — we weren't going to magically recruit seasoned leaders into all of our management roles. We had to build a system to help the team we had become more effective. So we stopped expecting managers to invent the job for themselves. We wrote down what good management meant at our company, put managers into cross-functional groups where they could coach each other, and held a monthly rhythm that made it stick. Turnover fell from 25% to 1.5%. Teams started bringing us cost savings we hadn't asked for. Management by Design is that system, taken out of one company and made repeatable. We're not academics and this isn't a course. It's the thing we wished we'd had a decade earlier. Dustin Campbell · Founder The partners ## Operators, not advisors ![Dustin Campbell](https://www.persistently.us/hubfs/persistently-site/fd8ec27bfc.jpeg) #### Dustin Campbell Founder Twenty-five years in middle-market business as a CEO, board member and private equity operating professional, centred on transformational growth and operational improvement. Executive Chairman at CultureWise. ![Erik Waters](https://www.persistently.us/hubfs/persistently-site/33985fad06.jpeg) #### Erik Waters Partner Co-owner and operator of Adtech Systems through its transformation from a regional provider to a global managed service business, and its sale in 2022. ![Alex Hill](https://www.persistently.us/hubfs/persistently-site/5f9fa5ff91.jpeg) #### Alex Hill Partner · President, CultureWise A decade of leadership across IT services, operations and people operations. At Adtech Systems he built the services organization through its shift to recurring revenue, and pioneered much of the continuous-improvement thinking behind the system. Earlier at AVI-SPL and RSM US. We've all sat in the chair you're sitting in, with the same payroll pressure and the same instinct to solve it by hiring. Everything in this system exists because we needed it ourselves. Our philosophy ## Great companies don't rely on improvisation. They rely on systems. - Systems over personality - Capacity over training - Shared language over individual style - Cross-functional empathy over silos - Consistency over improvisation Management by Design is one of five interconnected systems in the Persistence Management System. It's the brain — and it's the whole of what we do. [Read about the wider system at PMH →](https://www.persistently.us/pmh?hsLang=en) ![Persistently](https://www.persistently.us/hubfs/persistently-site/66aed6c5bc.png) In collaboration with **CultureWise** Explore Home Why Management by Design How It Works About Us Connect Partner With Us Contact Us [PMH](https://www.persistently.us/pmh?hsLang=en) [CultureWise](https://www.culturewise.com) © 2026 Persistently · Concord, MA USA Privacy Policy · CCPA Privacy Notice · Terms + Conditions