Operetic, from operate: a business is a system in motion, not a diagram. What's actually wrong, and whether a fix holds, only shows up in the operating.
Board-level leadership, backed by delivery.
We take on the problems that structure a business for what's next: operating model, technology, data, procurement, cyber security, go-to-market and board governance. A seasoned operator leads the work at board level and stays accountable for the outcome; our UK and European teams lead the delivery that follows to completion. AI is often part of the answer. It's rarely the whole question.
What's actually holding the business back?
Most businesses in the scale-up to mid-cap range feel one of these before they can name it. Each one is a problem we take on and stay accountable for, with a delivery track record behind it, not a generic diagnostic. Some of these are AI questions. Most of them aren't.
Have you outgrown founder-led coordination?
Decisions queue behind one person. Every hire you make lengthens the queue rather than shortening it.
Explore the Fractional COO
Is your technology estate compounding risk instead of removing it?
Nobody wants to touch the system everything depends on, and the person who built it left two years ago.
Explore CTO / CDO leadership
Is your data actually connected, or just adjacent?
Two reports answer the same question differently, and there is a meeting to decide which one to believe.
Explore Chief Data Architect
Who's accountable if the infrastructure fails tomorrow?
You can name the supplier but not the recovery time, and nobody has tested it since the contract was signed.
Explore Fractional CIO
Is your supply chain a cost centre, or a risk you can't see?
Renewals happen because a date passed, not because anyone reviewed what was being renewed.
Explore Procurement & Supply Chain
Who owns AI when nobody has functional accountability for it?
Three teams are piloting something. None of them can tell you what it has saved.
Explore Fractional CAIO
Can you show that you're secure, or only say so?
A customer's questionnaire lands, and answering it costs a fortnight of senior time, because the evidence sits in three places and one person's memory.
Explore Fractional CISO
Would three of your people describe what you sell the same way?
Ask them separately and you get three answers, each delivered with complete confidence. The prospect has already heard all three.
Explore Fractional CMO
Is your roadmap a plan, or a queue?
It gets rewritten whenever a large customer asks, nothing is ever taken off it, and nobody can say which decision the next quarter is meant to settle.
Explore Fractional CPO
Does the market understand what you have built?
The results are good, the announcements are accurate and cleared, and the price does not move. That gap is usually in the telling rather than the doing.
Explore Investor RelationsThe problem decides the leadership, not the other way round
Whichever way in, the structure is the same: an operator accountable at board level, and our delivery teams doing the work behind them. Most engagements start with operating model, technology or data. AI leadership is one route in among several, not the reason the others exist.
Every fractional provider sells you a person. We're the only ones who can also send the team.
Most fractional leadership is a diary: a share of someone's attention, and nothing behind it. When that person identifies work that actually needs doing, you're on your own to find someone to do it. We scope against the outcome instead, and we own both halves.
The Leadership
A named, seasoned operator embeds at board and ExCo level and stays accountable for the outcome in their area: strategy, governance and the vendor relationships that go with it. Judgement and direction, not a pair of hands.
The Delivery
When the work calls for defined delivery, we see it through to completion, whether that means bringing in extra capacity through our delivery partners, managing the suppliers you already have, or running a vendor selection on your behalf. If we run the selection, neither we nor our partners can win it.
Every recommendation is stress-tested through every discipline
Our leaders and delivery teams don't work from a single playbook. Every material call is reconciled across all the lenses before it reaches you. Disagreements are surfaced, not averaged away.
Business & Operating Model
Does this survive contact with how the business actually runs, and who has to change what they do on Monday?
Technology & Data
What does it cost to build, integrate and keep running, as opposed to what the demo showed?
AI & Automation
Is AI genuinely the right lever here, or the fashionable one? Usually it is part of the answer, rarely all of it.
Procurement & Supply Chain
What are you committing to commercially, to whom, and how hard is it to get out of?
Cyber Security & DevSecOps
What could you actually evidence if a customer, an insurer or an acquirer asked you tomorrow?
Product & Go-to-Market
Have you decided who you are for and what you charge, or has the answer just accumulated?
Board & Governance
Is the board being shown what it needs to govern, or what is easiest to produce?
Evidence, not opinion
Research and methodology from across our practice: the thinking behind the work.
Agile Sourcing: the real numbers
Four weeks to a signed ERP contract. A 9% savings target delivered at 15%. What the case studies actually show, and where agile sourcing doesn't fit.
Read the researchWhy 97% of organisations can't show AI value
88% of organisations use AI somewhere. Almost none can point to the P&L line it moved. The market sentiment data, in full.
Read the researchProblem before platform
Transformation programmes fail on sequencing, not technology. Agentic AI is just the sharpest current example.
Read the articleStart with a scorecard, or start with a conversation
Seven assessments: six that score you across seven areas, and one that recommends a way of working. Rated on screen, with a PDF in your inbox. No call required. If you would rather just talk, that door is open too.