From a $6,000 diagnostic to 90 days of embedded leadership — all anchored to the same four-pillar framework we ran inside a $15M professional services practice for 8 years. Pick the engagement that matches where you are.
Most services firms hire us at one of three moments. The diagnostic is the entry point. The rebuild and fractional engagements are for firms that already know the shape of the problem.
Every engagement is anchored to the same operating model we built and ran for 8 years. Each pillar enables the next. Skip one and the others can't hold weight. Read the full playbook before you book.
We run the operational diagnostic we'd run if we were stepping in as your COO ourselves. You walk away with a scored audit across four pillars, a prioritized roadmap with quantified margin impact, and a 90-day action plan — whether you continue with us or not.
15-question audit per pillar, scored 1–5 against reality not aspiration.
16+ operational failure modes mapped against your business.
1:1 conversations with leadership, PMs, and front-line — surfaced verbatim.
Who decides what, what process they follow, where it's currently breaking.
Top operational risks scored by likelihood and impact, with named owners.
What your utilization actually looks like at the person level — not the team average.
The 2–3 highest-leverage moves, sequenced, with quantified margin impact.
Phase 1 (diagnose), Phase 2 (design), Phase 3 (implement) — with weekly milestones.
Our full 40+ page framework, yours to keep.
Stakeholder interviews, document review, pain point mapping.
Workflow mapping, employee shadowing, real-time operations.
Root cause analysis, KPI review, industry benchmarking, quantification.
Prioritized roadmap, sequenced initiatives, 90-day action plan, presentation.
Two weeks of work. One report. Eight artifacts. No retainer commitment.
The methodology is repeatable. We've run this discovery dozens of times across services firms ranging from 30 to 250 people. The work doesn't expand because we know exactly what we're looking for and where it usually hides.
If your operation has unusual complexity — multi-region, M&A integration, or specialized verticals — we may quote slightly higher upfront. Always before the call ends. Never as a surprise.
For services firms that already know the leak is capacity. We install the resourcing model, KPI dashboard, and weekly cadence that turn aggregate utilization into per-person allocation visibility — and move the number 3 to 10 points within a quarter.
For a 60-person services firm at a $180 blended rate, moving billable utilization from 62% to 65% is not an incremental improvement. It's a $620K annual margin event.
You see 80% team utilization in the dashboard. Looks healthy. Sales feels free to close more work. Leadership feels the practice has room.
What you don't see: three senior PMs are at 110%, quietly burning out. Five mid-level PMs are at 50%, technically billable but not deployed to anything meaningful.
A capacity model that shows each person's current and forward allocation — not the team average. Visibility down to the hour committed per project, per person, per week.
A weekly capacity review with the right people in the room, a defined process for resolving conflicts, and decision rules that take it out of "whoever's most persistent" and put it into "what the system says."
Per-person committed hours by project by week, 4–12 weeks forward. Built in your existing tools.
Billable utilization by person, at-risk projects, leading indicators. Not just lagging.
Decision authority matrix for when two projects want the same PM. Conflict resolution by rule.
Meeting structure, attendees, required inputs. Installed and run with your team.
The bridge between pipeline and delivery capacity. Both sides stop blaming each other.
Baseline on day 1. Re-measurement at week 8. Quantified margin impact. Receipts for the board.
Audit current utilization, project allocation, and pipeline state.
Capacity model built in your existing stack. Dashboard wired to live data.
Weekly capacity review launched with your team. We facilitate.
Re-measurement vs. baseline. Hand off ownership fully to your ops lead.
Eight weeks. Live cadence installed. Owned by your team from week 5.
Because the methodology is built. We're not designing a capacity system for your business — we're installing one we've already designed, then tailoring it to your existing tools and team.
The expensive version of this work is the part most consulting firms charge for: discovery, framework design, change management theater. We've already done that work. You're paying for the install and the proof.
Embedded operational leadership for services firms that have outgrown founder-led ops but aren't ready for a full-time hire. We install the operating model — and run it — while you decide what comes next. Ninety days. Two days a week. Real authority.
The founder-led ops model breaks somewhere between 40 and 80 people — but the firm rarely has the revenue, role clarity, or operating model maturity to justify a $250K+ full-time COO hire at that stage.
So leadership runs the ops themselves for another year, burns out, accumulates debt across all four pillars, and ends up either hiring a COO into a mess or hiring too senior too early and watching them leave inside twelve months.
Founders run operations directly. Works at 20 people. Cracks at 40. Breaks at 60.
Embedded leadership while you build the system, decide on the long-term hire, and develop the role spec.
You hire into a system that already exists. Time-to-productivity drops from 12 months to 6 weeks.
Full diagnostic across all four pillars. Strategy session with leadership. Operating model designed.
Workflows go live. Capacity model running. Dashboards wired. Reviews launched. Cadence installed.
Your team runs the cadence. We consult. Re-measurement vs. baseline. The system holds without us.
This isn't a Friday office-hours retainer. We're embedded inside your delivery operations — in your Slack, in your meetings, in the rooms where decisions get made.
The cadence below is the default. We tailor it to your business in the first week. The key constant: two full working days per week spent inside your operation.
Travel: on-site for kickoff and closing weeks. Middle weeks are remote.
Three months. Two days a week. Embedded leadership. Transfer at the end.
The 90-day default works for most firms. If your operation is unusually complex — multi-region, post-acquisition, or specialized service lines — we may extend to 120 days, quoted upfront.
What we don't do: 6-month, 12-month, or indefinite engagements. The point is to transfer the operating model to your team or to a full-time hire.
Most consulting offerings promise a deliverable and show you logos. We show you the report.
Our PS Operations Playbook — the 40+ page framework we ran inside a $15M practice — is the same methodology and depth you receive at the end of every engagement, tailored to your business.
Same framework. Same artifacts. Same level of specificity. Read it before you book.
Download the sample playbookGrouped by topic. If your question isn't here, ask it on the call — that's what the call is for.
We'll ask three questions about how your operations actually run, tell you which engagement is the right fit, and if none of them are — point you toward what is. That's the call.
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