Your teams ship more than ever. The growth isn't following.
I redesign the execution operating systems of VC-backed B2B software companies so AI-era throughput compounds into growth — not coordination failure.
Where execution breaks down
At scale, the constraint is rarely strategy. It is the system that turns strategy into execution. AI accelerates what teams can produce — and exposes the limits of the operating model above them.
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Priorities exceed capacity and trade-offs are unclear
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Decisions are slow, revisited, or escalated unnecessarily
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Leadership time is consumed by updates rather than direction
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Execution health is hard to see in real time
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Headcount grows faster than output
What’s missing is not more effort — it’s an operating model that gives the leadership team real execution leverage.
AI increases execution leverage faster than organisations increase decision capacity. This is not a people problem. It is a design problem.
The execution operating system
AI increases execution leverage faster than organisations increase decision capacity. The operating model that worked at thirty people was not designed for this much throughput. I redesign the specific leadership mechanisms — decision architecture, operating cadence, prioritisation discipline, execution visibility — that determine whether that throughput compounds or collapses.
AI-Era Execution Briefing
A half-day facilitated workshop that teaches the seven components of the execution operating system and maps your business against them live.
Your leadership team leaves with shared language on where execution is breaking and a written memo with the top hypotheses on where to focus.
Execution Health Check
2-3 week diagnostic of the full executive operating system. Structured interviews across leadership, product, engineering and GTM.
Board-grade assessment of where the system is about to fail, with commercial stakes tied to the KPIs you already track.
Execution OS Design
Redesigning how the leadership team decides, prioritises, coordinates and tracks execution — lever by lever — to deliver a working operating system you can runs with immediately.
Covers decision architecture, operating cadence, WIP discipline and execution visibility — scoped to the components that matter most to your business.
What changes
Clarity of execution
Strategy translated into explicit priorities, trade-offs and ownership
Leadership leverage
Time moves from updates and coordination to direction and decisions
Execution at scale
Delivery runs through the system, not through heroics, escalation or the bandwidth of one or two people.
Where to start
Start with a half-day Execution Briefing to see whether the frame fits, or go straight to a full Execution Health Check. Both are fixed fee, both produce something you can act on independently. The right starting point depends on how much you already know about where the problem sits.
About me
Most companies don't struggle because the strategy is wrong. They struggle because the system for executing it doesn't scale.
I've held COO, Chief of Staff and General Management roles in VC-backed B2B software companies across fintech, compliance, data and AI — from three-person startups to 200-person scaleups.
I've been the person hired to bridge the coordination gap with my own bandwidth. The pattern is predictable: the operating model that worked at thirty people breaks as throughput increases, and the instinct is to hire someone to hold it together. The hire is rarely wrong, but the timing usually is. Hiring someone to fix an undesigned operating system fails predictably. Hiring someone to operate a designed system succeeds.
Today I work with VC-backed software companies to redesign that system — structurally, before the next hire is made.
“I worked with Ian during a time of major change, and he was exactly the person you want. Calm, positive, and focused — he supported the team brilliantly while delivering on time and to a high standard.
He has a real talent for making the complex simple and bringing others with him.”
Sarah Arana-Morton, CEO | Chair | NED