How I Work
THE DIRECT APPROACH
Every engagement runs on DIRECT, a six-phase service design process. A few working sessions and a six-month build use the same phases. What changes is the service and how deep each phase goes.
Two things never change. Nothing gets built before we know what’s actually in the way, and nothing ends without a way to know it’s still working. Every engagement is scoped to what you need.
DIAGNOSE: See the whole picture.
We map the challenge end to end. What customers experience, what the team does behind it, the decisions, tools and handoffs that connect the two, including the agencies, brokers and distributors you depend on, and where it breaks down. A stalled sale, a slow approval and a growth plateau can all trace back to the same place. What looks like a people problem is usually a design problem.
You leave with a map of the challenge as it really is and what’s most in the way.
INITIATE: Agree on where it’s going and what done looks like.
Before anything gets built, the investment, timeline, owners and gaps go on the table. A named goal, a done condition everyone can point to, and ownership made explicit. Most projects that fail don’t fail in execution. They fail here, when everyone assumed they were aligned and nobody checked.
You leave with a plan, a done condition and named owners.
REFINE: Design and build the change, with the team.
The right people come into the room. Working with your team we build the processes, tools, customer touch points and decision rules in structured working sessions, and we pressure-test them against real conditions before anyone relies on them. Every session ends with a decision or a defined next step.
You leave with a working solution the team built and can run without anyone explaining it.
EXECUTE: Put it to work and measure what matters.
The change goes live, with measures tied to what Diagnose found, not to whatever was tracked before. Most organizations have goals. Fewer have a clear line between the goal and what someone does differently on a Tuesday morning. This builds that line.
You leave with live measures and a check-in rhythm the team owns.
COMPLETE: Close it cleanly.
A formal review against the done condition agreed at the start. What moved, what the team now owns and what comes next get stated plainly. A 60-day check-in is booked before anyone leaves the room.
You leave with a closed engagement, not a handoff and a hope.
TRACK: The growth alarm.
Everything built gets wired into a forward-looking monitor that tracks momentum and flags drift early, so the team adjusts instead of rebuilding. It watches the signals standard reports miss, so the team questions the right thing early instead of rebuilding late.
You leave with an early warning system, and support to adjust it as the team, the business and your customers change.
Who This Is For
Food, beverage and snack brands of roughly 11 to 200 people, growing into new retailers, new states or the US market. You pay agencies, brokers and distributors, and nobody has designed how it all runs together.
It’s that something capable is stuck,
and the people inside it are too close to see why.
Service Mapping
A short diagnostic sprint. In a few structured sessions, I work with your team to map the challenge end to end. What your customers experience, what happens behind the scenes to deliver it, and where the business is losing ground.
Service Design
An in-depth, collaborative build. Together, we design and build what needs to change and customize the training so your team can run it. They keep improving it for the business and your customers, and get more room to do their best work.
Fractional partnership
I join your team in a leading role and get the change running, with accountability built in from the start. I stay until you make a full-time hire or the team can run it without me, adjusting as feedback comes in from the team, the business and your customers.
Heineken, AB InBev, Hanes,
and a brewery I built and sold.