I install operating layers underneath founder-led businesses.
For founders doing £1m to £10m who have outgrown informal management, where the founder is still too central to decisions, delivery, and rhythm. This is where I write about the work.
The Operating Layer
i.Direction
What the business is trying to achieve this quarter. One page. Everyone reads it.
From the Notebook
The founder is not the operating layer
Most founders at one to ten million pounds revenue are not the bottleneck. The absence of a system is.
The Founder Operating Notebook. Practical field notes for founders who have outgrown informal management. Every two or three weeks: operating cadence, accountability, founder bottlenecks, and the hidden layer between strategy and execution.
Theses
An operating layer is structure, rhythm, accountability, installed once and kept forever. People come and go. The layer stays.
Most £1m to £10m businesses don’t have an operations problem. They have an accountability problem dressed up as one. New software doesn’t fix that. Cadence does.
The work isn’t another tool. It’s making the tools you already pay for actually run the company. New software rarely fixes a rhythm problem.
The founder is not the operating layer. The job of the work is to make the business run well without you in the room.
Currently
Work with me
I take on a small number of founder-led businesses each quarter. The work begins with a short operating review: where decisions sit, how accountability runs, what’s holding the business together, and where you’re still carrying too much of it yourself.
The work requires proximity, judgement, and implementation.