Most multi-entity operators reach a point where the operating layer has accreted without anyone writing down the design. A second business came online, a holding structure was added for tax or estate reasons, and a vendor relationship that started in one arm quietly propagated to three. Nothing dramatic — but the seams between entities have become the work itself. This practice exists to map those seams, decide which ones to keep, and rebuild the ones that have drifted.
The firm is deliberately boutique and principal-led because operations work at this layer cannot survive a hand-off to a junior in week nine. Every engagement is staffed with Phyllis at the rail — interviewing operators, walking vendor contracts, sketching process maps at the kitchen table, and writing the remediation memo that becomes the artifact the rest of the organization references. No slide pads. No TAM math reprinted as insight.
Clients come from the same cross-sector set the firm serves across every practice: professional services firms with growing operating complexity, fleet and ground-transport operators rationalizing a stack acquired by acquisition, family-office holding structures whose operating arms share more back-office than their boards have formally recognized, and publishing or media entities whose editorial workflow has outgrown the systems built for it. Each engagement starts with the actual operating layer, never with a sector template.
The deliverable is always written, never a presentation. A diagnostic of the current operating layer, a remediation plan sequenced over twelve weeks, a KPI instrument the principal can read every Sunday, and a staffing model written down before it is implemented. Engagements typically resolve inside one quarter and leave the client with a written operating thesis they can hand to their next CFO, COO, or operating partner without translation.
For principals navigating a succession event, a capital raise, or a quieter decade of compounding across several entities, this practice is the operations counterpart to the firm’s strategic advisory work. Engagements often begin on the strategic side and surface an operational seam that demands its own twelve-week sprint. That handoff is built in by design, not by referral.
End-to-end process mapping and redesign across entities that share a back office. Workflows written down so the answer to "who owns this" stops depending on who is in the room.
Inventory, redundancy audit, and consolidation roadmap for the software, services, and vendor relationships that quietly compound into overhead across a multi-entity structure.
Hands-on operating support through a transformation window — staffing model design, coordination across operating arms, and a written change-management cadence that holds under load.
A metric suite built to be read on a Sunday evening: throughput, margin, exception rate, and the few lead indicators a principal needs to act before the quarter turns.
Engagements start with a single message. Include your sector, the entity count, and what the next ninety days should look like.
The principal reads every submission and replies within two business days. Begin with the sector, the entity count, and the first deliverable you have in mind.
Begin an engagementpdt-global-consulting-llc@polsia.app