The short answer
An Operating Review is a diagnostic of your whole business. I look at it from three sides: your view, your team’s view, and how the work actually gets done. The gaps between them are the findings. You finish with an assessment of nine dimensions and a 90-day plan, which we go through together.
I ran six Operating Reviews in 2026. Each time, the founder ended up looking at their own business from an angle they had not seen before. And very frankly, that is the part I like best.
So let me walk you through how I run a Review, and what it looks like from your side of the table.
How I look at your business
I like my Operating Reviews to give a complete operational picture of the company, so I use a three-angle approach. A Review takes from a few days for a small business to four weeks for a larger one.
Step one is you. We sit down one to one, in the founder sessions. I ask targeted questions across the whole business: what works, what worries you, where you want to take it. The facts you write down beforehand, in a short questionnaire. The rest we cover out loud. Yes, I notice when you pause. It tells me where to look closer.
Step two is your team. They answer a questionnaire written for them, and you read it before it goes out. Interviews follow where they help, once we have agreed on them. What your team tells me comes back to you as patterns, never with a name on it.
Step three is me, watching. I get access to your tools and your systems, sometimes your office, and I see how work actually gets done. I do not ask anyone anything during this part.
That is a lot of material. Here is where it all goes.
The 9D: the grid I read your business through
Everything goes into one grid, my 9D method. It has nine dimensions, and I read every company through all nine, from each of the three angles.
Identity and Strategy. Who the company is, where it is going, and how it wins on the way.
People and Systems. Who owns what, and how the work in those seats runs.
Execution and Delivery. Whether the business ships on a rhythm, and whether the way it wins and keeps clients works.
Numbers. Whether you know if the business is profitable, safe on cash and on track, early enough to decide.
Leadership and AI. Whether you manage the business rather than do its work, and where a machine can safely take work off your people.
Where it gets interesting: the gaps
So what do I do with three different views? I never average them. The gaps between them are the findings.
Take the org chart. You draw it one way. Your team describes it another way. And the work follows a third one. When they do not match, someone is carrying a responsibility that is written nowhere, or a role on paper does nothing in practice. That is where I look first.
One more example. Say a founder tells me the team is careful with client data. The questionnaire says the same. Then the observation shows client briefs pasted into a free tool. The rule lives in the founder’s head and has not reached the team.
What you get at the end
The diagnosis. Your whole business across nine dimensions: what works, what leaks, what is missing, and what to fix first. It opens with the central finding in a few sentences, then the three to five gaps that matter most, and what breaks first if nothing moves. It also says what I left out and why.
The 90-day plan. The change, in order, with an owner and a deadline on every line. You can start on Monday.
The walk-through. The Review is delivered on your private portal, and you can download it as a PDF. But it is not simply a document you receive in your inbox. We sit down in person, in Qatar or remotely, and I guide you through every finding. We discuss it, and if something in the plan does not fit your business, or you are not comfortable with it for your team or your year, we adjust it right there. Honestly, founders are always very positively surprised, and there is always at least one finding they did not expect.
And after the Review?
It is yours. You can take the plan and run it with your own team. You can also continue with me, in a retainer I call the Operating Partnership, where I stay inside the business and lead the change on agreed days.
The Review is built for founders of established businesses, with a team in place, who feel the structure will not keep up with their growth. If you are still testing what you sell, or you want a pair of hands with no strategic mind, I will tell you on the first call and point you to someone better suited.
Investors can also make great use of the Operating Review, before a deal, during it, or after an investment, to see what financial due diligence cannot: where the business depends on its founder, what breaks at scale, and whether the current team can deliver the plan.
When you are in the business every day, stepping back to see all of it is hard. An external view helps. Book a call with me, and let’s see what your business looks like from a different angle.
