EMBEDDED OPERATOR
Turn leadership decisions into coordinated execution.
A focused 12-week engagement for technology companies where important decisions lose clarity, ownership or momentum after the meeting.
The decision: bring in senior operating leadership for a defined period—without displacing the CEO or functional leaders.
12 weeks · Approximately two days per week · Built for transfer, not dependency
12 weeks
BOUNDED ENGAGEMENT
~2 days / week
INSIDE THE LEADERSHIP RHYTHM
One exit condition
THE SYSTEM CONTINUES WITHOUT ME
WHEN THIS FITS
Complexity has grown faster than the operating model.
- Decisions are revisited instead of carried through.
- Priorities compete without resolution.
- Ownership across functions is ambiguous.
- The CEO is coordinating too much personally.
- Cross-functional work slows down after meetings.
Typically post-seed through Series B, or an established product organisation going through a critical transition.
WHERE I SIT
Inside the leadership team, without replacing it.
I work directly with the CEO and leadership team, with enough authority to coordinate cross-functional priorities, surface unresolved trade-offs and run the operating cadence.
- Leadership retains the decisions.
- Functional leaders retain responsibility for their domains.
- I install and run the cross-functional operating layer that connects the two.
WHAT I INSTALL AND RUN
The operating layer between agreement and action.
Decision cadence
- Leadership priorities
- Decision log and decision rights
- Assumption and risk review
- Escalation of unresolved trade-offs
Execution system
- One accountable owner per outcome
- Dependency management
- Weekly operating review
- Visible blockers and next actions
Learning loop
- Evidence and delivery signals
- Course correction
- Reusable operating knowledge
- Transfer into the organisation
AFTER COMMIT: THE WEEKLY OPERATING RHYTHM
Decide → Own → Execute → Learn
Decide
Make the priority, trade-offs, intended outcome and non-goals explicit.
Own
Name one accountable owner, clarify decision rights and expose dependencies early.
Execute
Review movement against the intended outcome, coordinate cross-functional work and remove blockers.
Learn
Compare results with the assumptions, make course corrections and retain what the organisation learns.
WHAT CHANGES BY WEEK 12
The company can carry important decisions without the CEO chasing every issue.
- Fewer competing priorities.
- Named owners for cross-functional outcomes.
- A visible decision and risk cadence.
- Dependencies and escalation paths surfaced early.
- A weekly operating rhythm adopted by the leadership team.
Weeks 1–2: diagnose the operating friction, clarify priorities and define decision rights.
Weeks 3–4: install the decision cadence, ownership model and weekly operating review.
Weeks 5–8: run the system, resolve dependencies and establish the learning loop.
Weeks 9–12: transfer ownership, strengthen leadership adoption and define how the discipline continues.
IN CURRENT PRACTICE
One evidence system across product, outreach and fundraising.
In one current venture-backed engagement, the work includes turning commercial assumptions into operating priorities, establishing a weekly decision cadence and aligning product, outreach and fundraising around a single evidence system.
See the operating model at scale →
What this is not: a substitute for a permanent COO, passive advisory, project administration, ownership of every operating function or an arrangement designed to make me indispensable.
Decisions only matter when they survive into execution.
Bring the decision, operating friction or leadership bottleneck that is not resolving itself.
Jörn Green 