It depends on the shape of the engagement: the scope, the number of days, the business itself. Get in touch and we will scope it together. For the Operating Partnership, the level is agreed at signature and recalibrated after the Operating Review, in either direction, with the Review as the evidence. You will never receive a timesheet from me.

The Operating Review takes four to six weeks, and it gives you a thorough diagnosis of the business along with the plan that comes out of it. Changing the way a company runs takes longer than understanding it. Giving every function a real owner, and settling a rhythm your team keeps on its own, is the work of two quarters. Six months is the minimum where that change becomes solid enough to hold.

The 9D was built in cooperation with another fractional COO. Between us: more than 40 years of operating experience, inside corporates, startups and founder-led businesses.

It stands on established operating methods and on formal training. And on the thing no method can give, which is what we have watched work and fail inside real businesses.

It is not a frozen model. We run it in live engagements, reassess it, and update it, because the world it measures is moving fast and a method that stands still falls behind. What it gives you is a guide strong enough to trust and clear enough to argue with: your whole business, nine dimensions, one view.

The difference is what happens after the analysis. A consultant studies the business, hands over recommendations, and leaves you to apply them. That last part is the hard one, because it has to happen while the business keeps running.

I start with a deep diagnosis of your business in particular: four to six weeks across nine dimensions, inside your systems and with your team, rather than a framework applied from the outside. Out of it comes a 90-day plan that we go through and agree together, so nothing is imposed on you.

Then I stay. In a Partnership I am inside the business, leading the change with your team until it holds on its own. And whatever is already working, we keep and protect.

In practice, I become the founder's sparring partner, the number two of the business. I diagnose, architect, install, and pilot the people and systems that do the work. Doing your team's tasks is not my job, and if it were, you would have bought a pair of hands and kept the same problem. When a project needs a specialist builder, a custom AI deployment for example, I bring one in and lead the delivery.

That reaction is normal and I plan for it. Every conversation is agreed with you in advance, and we decide together how it runs. Nothing any individual says comes back to you attributed. What comes back is the pattern, which is the only part that is useful anyway.

That fear usually comes from having seen bad structure: process for its own sake. What I build removes ambiguity, not personality. One owner per function, decisions that stop waiting, numbers that arrive on time. Structures don't restrict people. They free them.

Both. In Qatar, in person is easy. Travel inside the GCC works too, agreed in advance, and the same goes for Europe when travel is taken care of. I also work fully remotely, and leading a team remotely is not a problem. We agree the balance of remote and onsite time when we scope the engagement.