Everything ends up waiting on one person
Quotes, approvals, exceptions and hiring all route back through you, holidays are largely theoretical, and the business grows to roughly the size of one person's inbox before it stops.
Business operations
We make the business run without you in every decision.
We map how the work actually moves through your company, find the constraint that is capping your output, write the procedures that remove it, and then put a weekly rhythm around the numbers so that drift shows up in days rather than in quarters.
Where this usually starts
You do not need a consultant to tell you something is wrong, you need somebody to name it.
These are the symptoms owners describe to us on the intro call, and underneath very nearly all of them sits the same small handful of structural causes.
Revenue is up and the margin is not
Nobody can say with any confidence which jobs, clients or product lines actually make money once the delivery time is counted honestly, so the unprofitable work quietly keeps getting sold.
New hires take months to become useful
There is nothing written down, so training happens by shadowing and quality depends on whoever did the teaching, while the good people carry the extra load and start looking around.
The same argument comes back every month
A recurring decision gets relitigated because it was never written into a standard, so the answer changes depending on who happens to be in the room and how tired everybody is that week.
Reporting arrives too late to act on
The numbers land six weeks after the month they describe, which means that by the time a problem becomes visible in a report you have generally paid for it at least twice already.
Delivery is already running at capacity
Sales keeps selling and operations keeps absorbing, the buffer disappeared some time last year, and every new client you win is now quietly a risk to one you already have.
The method
The method is intake, owner, execution and review, repeated until it gets boring.
Every recurring piece of work in a company should be able to answer four questions: where does it enter, whose name is on it, what standard is it done to, and when does anybody look at it again. Most operational chaos turns out to be one of those four going unanswered for long enough that everyone stopped noticing.
We do not arrive with a framework to install on you. We spend the first stage watching the real thing instead, sitting in the meetings, reading the message threads where the exceptions get handled, and timing the handovers that people apologise for, which is why the map that comes out of it is one your team tends to recognise themselves in.
- We interview the people doing the work, not only the people managing it
- Cycle time and rework get measured before we change a single thing
- Findings are ranked by what each one costs you every month, in actual money
Fixed-scope engagements
There are two projects, each with a defined start, end and price.
Both are invoiced half at the start and half on handover. Prices are in US dollars and they exclude travel, which is quoted at cost and agreed with you well in advance.
Operations Diagnostic
For owners who can tell that something is wrong but want it named and costed properly before committing to a rebuild.
USD
4,800
Fixed fee. Three weeks from kickoff.
- Interviews across every function that touches delivery
- An end to end process map from first enquiry to cash received
- Cycle time, rework rate and handover delay all measured
- Margin broken down by client, job type or product line
- Findings ranked by monthly cost, with the fix for each one
- A ninety day sequence that you can run yourself
- A two hour findings session with your leadership team
Operating System Build
Most complete
For companies that already know what the constraint is and want the system built, documented and handed over.
USD
16,500
Fixed fee. Ten to twelve weeks. Diagnostic fee credited if taken first.
- Everything included in the Operations Diagnostic
- A written procedure library across your core functions
- An owner map, escalation rules and clear decision rights
- Pricing and cost-to-serve rebuilt where the margin is leaking
- A one-page operating dashboard wired to your real data
- A weekly operating review, designed and then run with you
- Hiring briefs and role scorecards for your next two roles
- Handover training for whoever maintains it after we go
Operating partnership
Monthly work, once there is a system worth maintaining.
There is a six month minimum, after which it runs monthly with thirty days notice. All three tiers assume a system already exists, whether we built it or you did, so if there is nothing to maintain yet then it is better to start with the diagnostic instead.
Advisory
A standing outside opinion, and somebody to hold the cadence when the week gets busy.
USD
3,600
per month
Around one day a week of attention.
- Two ninety minute sessions every month
- We attend and challenge your weekly operating review
- Written follow-up with decisions and owners after each session
- Email access with a two working day response
- A quarterly review pack prepared together with you
Operating Partner
Most chosen
Hands on the actual work, rather than only on the agenda for it.
USD
7,400
per month
Around two days a week of attention.
- Everything included in Advisory
- A weekly working session with your operations lead
- We write and revise the procedures alongside your team
- The dashboard maintained and interrogated every month
- Hiring support, from the brief to the scorecard to the interview loop
- Supplier and contract reviews as and when they come up
- Email and message access with a same day response
Embedded
For a transition, a turnaround, or a stretch with no operations lead in place.
USD
13,500
per month
Around three days a week of attention.
- Everything included in Operating Partner
- We hold the operations seat while you recruit for it
- Direct management of a defined function or project
- Board or investor reporting prepared and then presented
- A named successor trained and handed over before we exit
- On site days included within our home region, travel elsewhere at cost
Deliverables
This is what lands in your drive, and the format it lands in.
Nothing we produce for you lives behind our login. Documents go into your document system, spreadsheets into your account and dashboards into whatever tool you are already paying for, so that if you stop working with us on a Friday, everything still opens perfectly well on the Monday.
- Process map, current and target stateDiagram plus source file
- Ranked findings with monthly costDocument plus spreadsheet
- Procedure library with owners and versionsYour document system
- Decision rights and escalation matrixOne page document
- Cost-to-serve and margin modelSpreadsheet, formulas visible
- One-page operating dashboardSpreadsheet or your BI tool
- Weekly review agenda and notes templateEditable templates
- Hiring briefs and role scorecardsEditable templates
Custom scope
Some work is bigger, stranger or more urgent than a tier.
It might be a post-acquisition integration, a founder stepping back, two divisions that need separating, or a new entity being set up to serve a group elsewhere. Describe it to us and we will price a scope against it in writing, within three working days of the intro call.
Questions
Questions we get asked about operations engagements.
No, although we will push for it if the constraint is not already obvious, because building a system around the wrong bottleneck is an expensive way to feel productive. If you go on to take the Operating System Build within sixty days of a diagnostic with us, we credit the diagnostic fee against it.
During a diagnostic it is roughly an hour per person interviewed, plus a two hour findings session for your leadership team. During a build, expect two to four hours a week from whoever will own the system afterwards, and that involvement is genuinely not optional, because a procedure written without the person who does the work is fiction with a version number on it.
Only where a tool genuinely removes work, and usually rather later than clients expect us to, because most operations problems turn out to be ownership problems wearing a software costume. We take no commission, referral fee or kickback from any vendor, so a recommendation from us is worth exactly what it appears to be worth.
Then we will say so in the findings and you can point the ninety day sequence at demand instead, which does happen often enough to be worth mentioning. A company with clean delivery and no pipeline does not need a procedure library, it needs buyers, and the diagnostic is designed to be honest about which of the two you actually are.
After the six month minimum, yes. You get one pause of up to two months in any twelve month period, agreed in writing at least thirty days ahead of time. Anything beyond that counts as a cancellation, which is also perfectly fine and takes thirty days notice from the end of the current month.
Start with the constraint rather than the calendar.
Book forty five minutes and describe what keeps failing. We will tell you which of these engagements fits the problem, or that none of them really do.
We also run a much smaller trading mentorship covering risk and process discipline, which is education rather than advice. See what it covers.