Every engagement I take starts the same way, whether the company is two people with an idea or forty people with a Postgres instance on fire. I call it the Operating Review. It is deliberately boring, it takes thirty days, and by the end we both know exactly what to fix first and whether I am the right person to help fix it.
Week 1 — Read everything, change nothing
I read the repo, the metrics, the support inbox, and the last three months of team communication. I sit in on one sales call and one support conversation. I do not suggest anything yet.
The output is a written problem list: every place where the product, the funnel, or the team leaks. Ranked by what it costs you, not by how interesting it is to fix.
Week 2 — Set the bar
Most teams do not have a quality problem; they have an undefined-quality problem. Week two produces three one-page definitions:
- The engineering bar. What "done" means: tested how, reviewed by whom, deployed how fast, rolled back how.
- The metrics dictionary. One agreed definition for signup, activation, retention, and revenue — because until these are written down, every meeting argues about vocabulary.
- The hiring bar. What the next hire must be able to do in their first month, written before you interview anyone.
Weeks 3–4 — Ship one meaningful thing
Not a strategy deck. A shipped change against the top item on the problem list: the onboarding step where 40% drop, the query that times out at peak, the pricing page that undersells the product. Small enough to land in two weeks, meaningful enough that a customer or a metric notices.
While it ships, I install the cadence that keeps working after I leave: a weekly numbers ritual owned by a founder, and a habit of writing down every incident with one prevention step.
Day 30 — The honest conversation
We look at the problem list, what moved, and what the next quarter should hold. Sometimes the answer is an ongoing seat. Sometimes it is "you don't need me anymore — here's the list, call me at the next stage." Both are good outcomes. An advisor whose plan requires you to keep them forever is selling you rent.
The checklist
- Problem list, ranked by cost — week 1
- Engineering bar, metrics dictionary, hiring bar — week 2
- One shipped, measurable improvement — week 4
- Weekly numbers ritual, owned in-house — installed
- A written 90-day plan you can run without me — day 30