What it looks like
- You hired help, and your week didn’t get any lighter.
- Decisions get made over text, and whoever wasn’t there never hears about it.
- Jobs start before they’re ready, and the rework shows up later.
- The same problems keep coming back.
- Good people stop deciding things, because it all comes back to you anyway.
Capacity added to a structure that can’t hold it doesn’t relieve the bottleneck, it feeds it. Hire all you want. If nothing gets decided a level down first, you’ve just added two more things to manage.
How I work
Every operational fix I’ve made in twenty years has run the same six steps.
- Identify what actually happened, not what someone thinks happened. Then decide: one-off, or something the system will keep producing.
- Define why. Root cause, not the first plausible story.
- Measure what it cost. Real numbers, even rough ones. What gets quantified gets taken seriously.
- Track it, to find out if you called it right, and later, whether the fix held.
- Improve the checkpoint that should have caught it.
- Repeat, because the first version is never the final one.
And not everything that goes wrong needs a fix. Build process around a one-off and you’ve added weight nobody needed.
An example
Residential remodeler, about $5M in revenue
$265,000 to $415,000 a year in recoverable margin
A 30-day diagnostic traced it to rework and missed handoffs, admin work the systems should have been doing, and owner time spent on decisions that belonged a level down. Conservative figures, rounded for confidentiality.
Two ways to start
If you already know what needs fixing, we scope the fix and get it done. If you know the symptom but not the cause, we start with a 30-day diagnostic that finds it and puts a dollar figure on it.
Questions owners ask
What does a fractional COO do?
Runs operations part time, the way a full-time COO would: roles, accountability, process, and the numbers that show whether it’s working.
How is a fractional COO different from an operations consultant?
An operations consultant usually finds the problems and recommends fixes. A fractional COO runs operations part time. I do both: I find it, then stay until the fix holds with your team. I’ve worked in the field, in the office and in the owner’s chair.
How long does it take?
A diagnostic takes 30 days. Putting the fixes in usually takes a few months, because the team has to actually use them, not just receive them.
Start with a conversation.
Tell me what keeps not getting done. You’ll leave with at least one thing to act on, whether we work together or not.
Rather not book yet? Take a quick check or leave your details and I’ll reach out.