The problem

A 100-person business unit with a €4M budget had built its entire multi-year financial plan around one primary institutional client. A political crisis ended that relationship overnight. Work continued, but in slow motion: managers had no direction, no action plan and no communication between departments, and delays were piling up. Layoffs and site closures were on the table.

Diagnosis

The revenue shock was only the trigger. The real issue was a leadership gap: no shared direction, no priorities, and department heads working in silos just when the business needed to move fast.

What I did

1. Negotiated an exit timeline with the outgoing client, then rebuilt the revenue strategy and secured €500K+ in new contracts with EU, US and UN agencies.
2. Realigned a management team of 8 around an action plan delivered in under a month: priorities, meeting rhythm and cross-department communication.
3. Co-built a five-year strategy with department heads in under 3 months, approved by regional leadership.

What remains

A five-year strategy, a diversified revenue base, a management routine and cross-department working practices, all in place at handover.

The problem

A logistics operator was launching a new service in a hard-to-reach market. Demand existed, but the key routes were closed, no delivery process was in place, and only 5 client organisations were using the service.

Diagnosis

The service did not lack demand, it lacked the capacity to deliver and the visibility to sell: no access to the key routes, no operating procedures, no trained drivers, and a market that did not yet know the service could deliver.

What I did

1. Negotiated access to 5+ new routes with local authorities, community leaders and partner organisations.
2. Set up 10+ operating procedures covering route planning, dispatch approval and incident handling.
3. Recruited and trained the drivers, and took the service to market with partner organisations.

What remains

Route agreements, documented operating procedures and a trained driver team, allowing the service to keep growing.

The problem

An international organisation was launching operations in a new country, in a highly volatile environment, with no local team, no processes and no infrastructure. The plan existed only on paper. Leadership did not know where to start: no clear ownership, no way to track execution, and priorities shifting every day.

Diagnosis

The gap was between strategy and execution: no defined roles, no decision owners, scattered information and no shared processes. Hiring 40 people into that would have produced chaos, not delivery.

What I did

1. Designed the operating model from scratch: roles, decision rights, 10 operating procedures and a weekly management rhythm.
2. Opened 2 offices, recruited a team of 3, sourced and tested a new transport provider, and trained all 40 staff on the new procedures.
3. Ran day-to-day operations, partly remotely: daily planning, site selection and approval of every team deployment.

What remains

After the 3-month build, I ran the operation for another 12 months. Documented processes, trained managers, a real-time monitoring system and management routines kept it running after I left.

The problem

A 200-person business unit with 5 sites ran a logistics arm delivering goods to 20+ client organisations. Its transport had stopped, and clients were no longer receiving their goods. The internal control function was overwhelmed and blocking every shipment instead of finding ways to deliver. Teams were in open conflict, procedures were ignored and management had no way to restart.

Diagnosis

The constraints were manageable, but nobody knew how to assess them, and the teams could no longer work together. With no method, no clear procedures, no reporting and no one accountable for each decision, the only option left was to stop everything. The operation needed order, procedures and clear ownership: who decides, who executes, who is consulted and who is informed.

What I did

1. Diagnosed the blockage on site: interviewed key staff, mapped where decisions were stuck and defused tensions between teams.
2. Rebuilt the daily operating cycle on the operating standard I had written for the organisation: shipment planning, approval, tracking, and daily and weekly reporting.
3. Trained teams to assess conditions route by route so shipments could resume, taking day-to-day pressure off management.

What remains

Working procedures, reporting routines, and teams able to assess a situation and keep goods moving without outside help.

The problem

An international organisation operating in a highly volatile environment depended on fast-moving local information to decide every day where its teams could work. That information arrived scattered, in a foreign language, unverified and unanalysed. Decisions came late or were wrong: activities cancelled for nothing, no anticipation, constant uncertainty.

Diagnosis

Information was not missing, it was unusable: around 800 data points a day with no filtering, cross-checking or synthesis. Doing it by hand would have taken three full-time analysts.

What I did

1. Built, alone and in one month, an automated Python pipeline: collection from 10 sources, translation, filtering and automatic categorisation.
2. Analysed the stored data daily to detect patterns and anticipate major disruptions.
3. Delivered real-time briefings and alerts to 100+ users, including around 20 decision-makers, which allowed a full office to be relocated ahead of a disruption.

What remains

The system ran unattended on a server for months, with no maintenance team, keeping operations running until it was no longer needed.

The problem

A logistics operator moving around 20,000 tonnes of goods a year for some 50 client organisations across 15 countries had no common way of working. Each country improvised its own methods. The result: frequent incidents, late or cancelled deliveries, halted activities and lost clients. Nothing was written down, so every team started from zero and repeated the same mistakes.

Diagnosis

Teams did not lack skill, they lacked a method: no shared way to assess a new market, set up an operation and run it day to day. Every obstacle became a reason to stop.

What I did

1. Wrote a 70-page operating playbook covering the full project lifecycle, from initial assessment to delivery and performance monitoring.
2. Built a toolkit of 30 tools for daily operations: assessment templates, checklists, procedures, site and stock set-up, shipment tracking and mapping.
3. Trained 20+ managers, remotely and in person, to apply it.

What remains

The playbook became the only official standard of an operation moving around 20,000 tonnes a year, and spread well beyond the original 15 countries. I later used it myself to restart a stalled supply chain in 15 days.