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Get executive-level operational leadership that transforms growing organisations - without the full-time executive cost
Get executive-level operational leadership that transforms growing organisations - without the full-time executive cost
Discovery call
Discovery call
Book a 30 minute online meeting to determine your needs and challenges, and see how we can help.
Advisory & Mentoring
Advisory & Mentoring
With decades of work experience, we are well positioned to provide strategic insight and practical advice. We can also mentor your team members to enable their growth.
Fractional COO
Fractional COO
Your Fractional Chief Operations Officer takes on the responsibilities as a permanent COO, but does for a fraction of their time and cost
Projects
Projects
We provide experienced project management and execution for your specific projects. You get to focus on your core business in parallel.
Work we've done
Work we've done
Scaling a young business
Scaling a young business
I am a fractional COO to an AI tech company. They have strong sales and technical proficiency, very smart developers, and great recruitment and administration capabilities. They represent a cutting edge AI product, which will in time become a standard for financial institutions. There is a lot going for the company. What they needed was a wise and experienced person to help them formalise their processes and scale their business.
A COO’s role may be compared to the oil in the machine. The work a COO does is not obvious in and of itself, but without it, the machine can slow or even seize. I have played a full COO role for this organisation, and worked strategically and operationally.
Working with the founders, I have:
Facilitated a process to define the business’s purpose (Simon Sinek’s "WHY”)
Challenged the business model to support recurring revenue as well as tactical income
Negotiated with business partners
Put together plans for strategic customers
Defined, reviewed and implemented processes
Provided templates and best-practise experience
Provided mentorship to the founders
Provided delivery capacity on projects
Create a flexible, practical strategic plan
Create a flexible, practical strategic plan
A solar development company needed to introduce standardisation and predictability to the solar engineering discipline. The company hired a ‘Head of Solar Engineering" as there were already ~40 plants running, and many more in the works.
We needed a ‘how to’ plan to tackle the requirements of his role. Working with the new hire, I created a visual plan that allowed us to tackle the major objectives, and formalise the new way of working. Using Goldratt’s pre-requisite tree approach to hit the major objectives:
All plants perform optimally
Designs for new plants optimal and standard where ever possible
Construction is closely managed for quality
All plants are monitored remotely
Operations and maintenance standardised as a discipline, with subcontractors signed up for site work.
Together we monitored and adjusted this plan on a regular basis. It took nearly 2 years to implement fully.
The pre-requisite tree is a remarkable planning tool, and I have used it dozens of times in widely differing contexts.
Company Handbook
Company Handbook
The client is a hybrid business, with a fully remote software team. I have run remote teams before, but felt we needed to be better. The Software Team Lead and I jointly attended Github’s Remote Teams training to learn about how to be efficient in this way of working.
One of the items that was listed in the training was the concept of an online handbook. This is the source of truth for all staff – from ‘how do I apply for leave' to ‘the defined business development process’. Github has open-sourced their company handbook, and it is a major component in their success as the world’s largest all-remote business.
We ran a project to create an internal handbook:
The first step was to define the tooling we would use. A technical person considered a number of options and we selected a tool.
Each department provided a participant to 'the handbook project', and together we defined the content for the site.
The technical person did the initial styling and coached the rest of us about how to do the work
The handbook was launched at a company meeting, and we ran a process to encourage usage and gather feedback.
The ‘handbook team’ met on a weekly and then a monthly basis to review the handbook, assess new ideas and items that needed to be updated. It remains a central resource in running the company’s operations.
Process design, optimisation and monitoring
Process design, optimisation and monitoring
The client was a startup with a single, very effective business developer, who unfortunately resigned and left the company scrambling. The company then hired a new Head of Business Development and several business developers. It became clear that the team needed a coordinated way to work, which allowed them to move and scale through stages, and ensure all financial and technical work and checks were completed.
Working with the executive team, engineers and the business developers, we:
Designed and documented a process through stages from 'unqualified prospect' to ‘notice to proceed’.
Included all the stakeholders: business development, engineering, finance, and externally the client and and the subcontractors
Coached all the staff, especially the business developers, in the process.
Implemented an online tool for process management and reporting.
We monitored adoption and issues, and refined the process several times.
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