I Didn’t Set Out to Build Frameworks.
I Set Out to Solve a Problem I Couldn’t Find a Real Answer to Anywhere Else.
I’m Sharon Olbeter, retired Air Force Colonel, graduate researcher in motivation science and adult development, and founder of DOABLE Strategic Group.
The day I took off the uniform, I lost more than a job. I lost the mission, the structure, the team, and an identity that thirty years had built, Airman Basic to Colonel. I had a clear vision for the contribution I wanted to make next. What I didn’t have was any idea why making it was suddenly so hard.
I did what you’d do. I studied the problem. Two graduate degrees later, I understood exactly why capable leaders slow down after service, and it has nothing to do with discipline.
Then I looked for a framework built for that specific problem. When I didn’t find one, I built it.
The DOABLE System™ exists because nothing addressed what I was experiencing - an experience I now call the Builder’s Dilemma™. Resolving it takes more than pushing through difficulty. It takes pinpointing the precise friction slowing your build and then taking the specific steps that resolve it
.
Three Decades in the Air Force — and a Career That Didn’t Follow a Conventional Path
I served over three decades in the Air Force — starting enlisted as a medical laboratory technician, commissioning as a civil engineering officer, and gravitating toward the world of personnel policy until I retired as an O-6 out of SAF/MRR within Air Force Manpower and Reserve Affairs at the Pentagon.
It was a nonlinear career, built on a willingness to follow what was interesting rather than what the promotion system rewarded.
That instinct served me well - until it didn’t.
What the Air Force gave me was a rigorous way of thinking about systems and strategy, and about how organizations actually develop their people. A discipline of building intelligently on what already exists. A tolerance for complexity and for operating under uncertain conditions.
What it didn’t give me was a framework for what came after it.
I had first separated from regular active duty as a captain. I wanted a better fit between my interests and my motivated skills, but moving from civil engineering to people-focused work felt like too great a chasm at the time. The sudden lack of structure threw me more than I expected, and I missed the Air Force itself, its worthy mission and its wonderful people.
To my great fortune, I discovered I could serve as a reserve officer and volunteer for all kinds of assignments while I honed my interests and developed new skills. I took on project-based work wherever I served, contributing to each organization while figuring out where I belonged among career fields. I was building, but still within a military structure.
I found my footing by paying close attention to what genuinely interested me, and by pursuing the academic work that could explain what I had been experiencing. Graduate study in motivation psychology and adult development, a Master of Education in Adult Learning and Development and a Master of Arts in Educational Psychological Studies, gave me the vocabulary I had been missing. It also gave me the research foundation that would eventually become The DOABLE System™. I kept building through the Reserves and earned an active duty retirement doing work that mattered to me.
The Builder’s Dilemma™
I had the time and the desire to build something meaningful. What I didn’t have was a framework for that kind of build, the kind with a lot funcertainty and nothing to benchmark against.
So I went looking for one. Everything I found was built for someone else. It was made for earlier career stages, when the main work is proving yourself and earning credibility. Or it was made for people who need motivation. I didn’t need motivation. I needed something specific to my actual situation.
That gap has a name now. I call it the Builder’s Dilemma™: what happens when a capable, accomplished professional builds something of their own with no proven model to follow and no framework precise enough for what they’re actually doing.
For the military leaders I work with, that dilemma is intensified by moving from a highly structured institution into a build they must create themselves. Most professional development frameworks can’t even see this experience, let alone address it.
What you’re doing requires precision. You need to know exactly what the problem is, and then exactly what you can do about it.
So I built the frameworks.
The Frameworks, and Why They Work Together
I conceived The DOABLE Approach™ first. It’s a framework grounded in motivation science, and it maps six dimensions of motivated action: Desires, Opportunities, Access/Capital, Beliefs, Learning, and Engagement. When those dimensions work together, you move. When one of them breaks down, you slow down.
From that framework came the diagnostic. If motivated action runs on six dimensions, then friction has six sources, and it’s almost never random. It comes from somewhere specific. That’s what the DOABLE Military Friction Finder™ pinpoints: the one source creating the most consequential drag in your build right now, so your effort goes toward the real problem instead of the most visible one.
The Approach is what moves you through it. Once your friction is pinpointed, the Approach supplies the moves that address it at the source, rather than trying harder against the wrong problem.
The more I worked with the system, the more I saw something else. The Builder’s Dilemma™ isn’t one moment you solve and move past. It’s a progression. Your build moves through distinct stages, and each stage brings its own demands and its own friction patterns. Treating every stage the same way is one of the most expensive mistakes serious builders make.
That became The Long Build™, a stage-based model that charts the full arc of a deliberate build across five stages: Expanding, Exploring, Committing, Generating Momentum, and Elevating Impact.
Together they answer two different questions. The Friction Finder and the Approach answer what’s slowing you and how to move through it. The Long Build Profile™ answers where you are in the build. Combined, they chart your DOABLE Route™.
You can learn more about them at the Frameworks page.
If the Standard Playbook Has Stopped Working - This Work Was Built for What Comes Next.
I work with military professionals building something of their own at every stage of The Long Build™ — from sensing what’s possible to elevating impact beyond themselves.
The starting point is always free.
The DOABLE Military Friction Finder™ identifies your primary friction type in about five minutes and gives you recommended actions immediately — no prior knowledge of the framework required.
When you want a more precise result, the Long Build Profile™ pairs with your Friction Finder™ result to identify your exact build stage.
Together they produce Your DOABLE Route™ - one of 30 personalized stage-and-friction combinations, and the most specific starting point the framework can give you.