altigad.
I was given access across teams, systems, and leadership, and asked to find out how decisions, information, and execution actually moved. There was no brief beyond that.
- Client
- Mid-size professional services organization
- Duration
- 8 weeks · 40 working days
- Initial scope
- Shadow one director, full access
- Expanded to
- Enterprise intelligence and C-suite advisory
Functionally this operated as chief-of-staff work: embedded alongside a senior director, coordinating cross-functional initiatives, and supplying decision-ready intelligence to the C-suite.
Organizational insight
- Mapped operational, commercial, and technical processes across seven departments
- Conducted 15+ structured interviews and a rapid “30 in 30” engagement sprint
- Identified failure patterns brought on by rapid growth and expansion, and quantified a 4.7× amplification across workflows
- Advised the CIO and IT leadership on infrastructure and communication systems, using distribution-list and ticketing analysis to highlight operational risk and fragmentation
Executive alignment
- Built direct working relationships with five C-level executives, including the CEO
- Provided strategic recommendations to CEO and CCO based on synthesized intelligence
- Shaped Marketing and BD alignment using data-driven inputs and validated feedback
Operational improvements
- Delivered 8 no-cost process improvements that reduced friction in BD, PM, and operations
- Identified three redundant initiatives and over 150 redundant distribution lists
- Improved CRM reporting by rebuilding dashboards from the data dictionary and translating contract and discount analytics into usable views for leadership
- Modernized external marketing and conference materials for the first time in more than two decades, including visual and animated assets built for the narrative
Cross-functional execution
- Consolidated and restructured 100+ battle-deck slides
- Automated visualization of key workflows using VBA
- Achieved full participation in a cross-team survey
- Rebuilt processes linking BD, PM, Contracting, and Marketing into clearer signals
- Designed sales enablement and market intelligence materials from direct team input, including a full-completion survey on a proposed reference guide
- Day 1Began shadowing the director reporting to the CCO.
- Day 12Mapped the full client intake process across six commercial touchpoints.
- Day 16Documented a 92-step workflow and quantified a 4.7× cascading failure pattern.
- Day 17Resolved a standing BD–Marketing conflict using a cross-department survey — 100% completion, no refusals.
- Day 20Delivered the first approved updates to the flagship external deck in 20+ years.
- Day 23Developed a client-sentiment redesign; flagged a single-point knowledge dependency.
- Day 24Reversed a prior IT decision through a business case; restored tools across the organization.
- Day 31Analyzed 2,000+ contracts to surface pricing variance and margin risk.
- Day 40Presented recommendations to the CEO and CCO with a phased plan.
View the full 40-day timeline
- Day 1Began shadowing the director reporting to the CCO.
- Day 2Secured invitations to every commercial meeting the director attended.
- Day 3Interviewed operations personnel; identified active cross-departmental initiatives.
- Day 11Secured mind-mapping software through IT; began consolidating battle decks.
- Day 12Mapped the full client intake process across six commercial touchpoints.
- Day 13Identified a service / change-order correlation as a BI initiative.
- Day 14Repositioned the company biography and external content strategy with the CMO.
- Day 16Documented a 92-step workflow and quantified a 4.7× cascading failure pattern.
- Day 17Resolved a standing BD–Marketing conflict using a cross-department survey — 100% completion.
- Day 19Secured the flagship external deck for revision — first approved changes in 20+ years.
- Day 20Delivered the first approved updates to the flagship external deck in 20+ years.
- Day 23Developed a client-sentiment redesign; flagged a single-point knowledge dependency.
- Day 24Reversed a prior IT decision through a business case; restored tools across the organization.
- Day 27Aligned a functional leadership team on approved software pathways; reviewed lead tracking with Marketing.
- Day 31Analyzed 2,000+ contracts to surface pricing variance and margin risk.
- Day 32Completed 15+ structured stakeholder interviews across functional levels.
- Day 34Completed the “30 in 30” stakeholder sprint — 30 stakeholders in 30 days.
- Day 35Documented 150+ redundant distribution lists with the CIO and IT service desk.
- Day 38Delivered eight zero-cost improvements to reduce cross-functional friction.
- Day 40Presented recommendations to the CEO and CCO with a phased plan.
Surfacing the signal leadership was missing.
The Chief Commercial Officer asked why internal teams were reporting different versions of client satisfaction and project risk. What should have been a single source of truth had become a fragmented chain of handoffs.
Rapid growth had produced ambiguous sentiment categories, inconsistent definitions between departments, and a broken signal path from CRM to leadership. Underneath, software plug-ins reaching across portals and data sets had tangled the data dictionary — so no one trusted anyone else's dashboard.
The outcome was a unified triage framework routing escalation directly to the CCO, with analytics linking contracting, BD, and sentiment. Leadership adopted it and surprise escalations reduced.
- Enter without formal authority.
- Use the organization's own material — meetings, documents, data, people — as the primary source.
- Move from observation to synthesis to action as fast as the material allows.
- Leave decision-ready intelligence senior leaders can act on.
The senior director who hosted this engagement provided a written reference and subsequently joined Altigad's advisory bench. To preserve client anonymity, the reference is withheld here and is available on request.
Engagement handled under confidentiality. Client identity, personnel, and internal systems are withheld.