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Complex operations, made measurable — and then made better.
For organisations where decisions are made case by case, the outcome depends on who is reviewing, and the cost of that is not visible. I map what actually happens, build the structure that removes the constraint, and leave the instruments that keep it improving.
Ten years, one method
A decade inside a top-five Canadian financial institution, then two years turning the same method on problems I owned. The figures below are the scale that work actually reached.
How I work
the method →Four moves, run in the same order every time. The fourth is the one most engagements skip, and it is the reason the change holds after I leave.
Diagnose the actual system
Not the org chart — the flow. A current state with named friction, costed, and validated by the people who do the work.
Specify the target state
A structure that is buildable and testable, agreed by the stakeholders who have to live with it. Not a vision deck.
Build the structures
Technical and operational: the process, the system, the training content, and the integration.
Close the loop
Data-gated validation, or it is not done. Measured weekly, with remedial action routed to a named owner.
What the fourth move changes
Diagnose, recommend, leave
Diagnose, build, embed, hand over
Without the fourth move, success is an accepted deliverable. With it, success is a met data gate — weekly, with a named owner for remedial action. That difference is the whole method.
What that has produced
all cases →Replacing a manual review with evidence-derived acceptance gates
A profitable line was being suppressed by a process everyone believed was prudence.
Writing low-income housing as a commercial insurance property required a lengthy evaluation by an underwriter and then a senior underwriter — of the b…
Operational change across an independent agent network
Change delivered to ~500 independent agent businesses and 450 employees across five product lines.
An independent distribution network — agents running their own businesses — across personal and commercial auto and property, life, mutual funds and v…
A 450-location rollout delivered in the first ten days of a shutdown
Two product lines, 450 locations, three provinces — including the training content.
When the Covid-19 shutdown closed branches, two independent financial product lines had no way for clients to complete agreements. The alternative was…
The systems I've built
the builds →Three systems built alone, end to end. They are evidence of range rather than products for sale.
What changes, and when
The same shape on the last engagements worth measuring: something held inside weeks, something built and adopted over the engagement, something still working a year later.
01First two weeks
- A costed current state and one committed pathway inside five working days — there is no discovery phase to fund first.
- Stakeholder validation in week two, so the decision is agreed before anything is built.
- A first read on where the constraint actually sits, and what it is costing.
02Through the engagement
typically 6–12 weeks
- The structure built and adopted — process, system or both, with the training content that makes it stick.
- Three gates met: handling time, escalation categories, and decision-and-override behaviour.
- Governance, weekly metrics, and a named owner for remedial action.
03After handover
- Capacity released and recorded — in past engagements, the equivalent of two analyst roles a year freed in one programme, and 7,000 manual triggers a year removed in another.
- Throughput pulled forward — one strategic timeline moved six months closer once the constraint came out.
- A standing improvement capability, so the team keeps prioritising its own work instead of buying it again.
Ways to work together
01
Hiring
The roles I am after sit where the constraint is organisational rather than technical. If you are filling one of those, the evidence on this site is the application.
how I would work inside your team →02
A defined piece of work
A bounded problem, scoped per engagement and quoted against it. Mission-aligned and non-profit work is scoped the same way.
the shapes of work →