Engagements are commissioned by a portfolio manager, board, or chief executive. The senior team remains in place, runs the business, and directs the work. We bring evidence, judgement, and execution capacity to the parts of it the team has agreed need outside hands.

Most engagements concern one of four areas: operational review, recruitment of senior or specialist roles, restructuring of the business, or operational right-sizing of teams and structures. Restructuring and right-sizing are commissioned together where the situation calls for both, or separately where one piece of work is already in hand. The pattern is recognisable. Real work needs to happen at pace. The senior team has the experience to do it but not the time. The alternatives are either slow, disruptive, or both.

Operational review

When an investor or board needs an independent operational view of a business, we provide one. The review is operationally led, not financially led: we look at how the business runs from sales through to productivity and headcount, and we identify the operational lead indicators that tell you where performance is actually heading. The output supports two related but distinct purposes: building a value creation plan for the business, or informing an investor’s decision on further capital.

Where the work supports value creation, the output is a plan that sits alongside the investment thesis. The plan names the operational shifts that need to happen, the lead indicators that will signal whether they are working, and the conditions that must be true for the forecast and budget to hold. It is written for the investor and the senior team together, in a register both can act on.

Where the work supports a capital decision, the output is the operational evidence behind the investor’s view on whether, how much, and on what terms further capital is committed. This work is typically commissioned pre-follow-on, often as a condition of top-up or rescue capital, where the investor wants an independent operational view before putting more money in. The senior team participates fully in the work; the audience for the conclusions is the investor making the call. We conduct the work with the team rather than around them, with the aim of producing an operational view all parties can stand behind, even when the investor’s decision goes one way or the other.

Reviews can be commissioned pre-investment, though the work lands harder in a competitive process where management read the exercise as scrutiny rather than support. Post-investment, pre-follow-on, post-follow-on, or in a plan-slipping situation, the conversation is more constructive and the work moves faster.

Recruitment support

When the business needs to recruit senior or specialist roles at pace, we run the search. We are researchers, not recruiters: we define the role properly, build a credible long list from real research and direct outreach, and hand over a shortlist that can go straight into interview. The senior team owns the appointment decision. We own the work of finding the right people to put in front of them.

Restructuring support

When the business needs to be restructured, we provide the operational analysis that supports the plan. The decisions that hold up under board scrutiny are the ones supported by independent evidence: what is genuinely surplus, what is load-bearing, and what looks like cost but is actually the connective tissue holding delivery together. We work alongside the senior team to produce that evidence and shape the plan, in a register that stands up to the board and the wider business. The work provides an independent operational view that the board can use as a shared basis for the decisions ahead, separate from the existing positions being argued for inside the business.

Operational right-sizing

Right-sizing is the work of moving a business from its current operational shape to a target shape without breaking the operation in the process. We assess where capacity can come out cleanly, where it cannot without consequence, and how to sequence the change so delivery continues through it. The senior team owns the change. We provide the operational hands and the analytical work that make it deliverable, including the protection of the parts of the business that look like cost on paper but are actually load-bearing in delivery.

How an engagement works

The first conversation is short. We do not arrive with a methodology or a deck. We listen to the situation, agree what the work actually is, and propose how we would run it alongside the senior team. The shape of the engagement is set by the work, not by a fixed model. Across all of our operational support work, the engagement is designed to land well with the senior team, conducted with the team rather than around them, so that the work strengthens the business rather than disturbing it.

Once the brief is clear, we are operational within days. The senior team is running the business; we are doing the work they have agreed needs doing. Reporting is into whoever the engagement is contracted with, with the team’s agreement on what we are doing and how.

The engagement ends when the work is complete. There is no nudge to extend.

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