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Founder led, scaling.
Businesses navigating their next stage of growth, where the founder team can no longer hold the operating model in their heads.
About
Anne-Marie
O'Neill.
The Mary Poppins of Ops.
Most businesses I work with aren't broken. They're stretched. Leadership teams are heads down in their own functions, and there's rarely the capacity, time, or cross functional view to step back and design what comes next. That's where I come in.
Background
Ten years at board level. Now fractional.
Over ten years at board level, I've led operations at brands like Coca-Cola, Tesco, JLL, and Gear4music.
I now bring that same clarity to founders, shareholders, and PE sponsors who need a senior operator in the room, without the full time price tag.
The pattern is familiar. A business hits its next stage of growth, or takes its first PE cheque, and the operational scaffolding that worked before stops working at scale. Reporting becomes a quarterly fire drill. The leadership team is single threaded on the founder. The next round, or the exit, gets harder than it needs to be.
That is the gap I close. I come in for a defined period, install the backbone, train the team to run it, and step back.
In the room at
- Coca-Cola
- Tesco
- JLL
- Gear4music
The approach
AI built in. Not bolted on.
AI is reshaping what good operations look like; most operating models haven't caught up yet.
I build with AI woven through them from day one: systems, processes, and decision points designed to work with intelligent tooling rather than around it.
The result: operations that move faster, scale further, and are genuinely fit for the next decade, rather than patched against the last one.
The promise
I bring the strategy. AI brings the speed. Your business keeps both. Long after I leave.
Where I work best
Three kinds of business. One operating challenge.
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PE backed portfolio.
Focused on operational uplift, value creation, or exit readiness. Sponsor reporting that needs to move from reactive to predictable.
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Established + ambitious.
Businesses where the leadership group wants a senior operator alongside the team to take operations to the next level.
The thread that runs through all three
They don't pretend to know it all. They want pushback on strategy and ideas. They're open to different ways of working.
I'm not a box-ticker, and I'm not a yes-man. The leadership teams I do my best work with want a senior operator who'll challenge the answer, not just deliver one.
How I work with people
The team owns the end game. I just show them the way.
I usually walk into rooms where people are wary of an outside hire. Most of the trust-building happens before any of the work does. Through listening, asking the right questions, and being honest about what I see.
High EQ over high control. Hands on, people-focused, in the room; not over Slack. New systems land cleanly when the people running them helped design them.
The team owns the outcome. I'm there to show the way, not to take credit. I leave the team taller than I found them. That's the brief.
How I show up
- · Listen first. Lead second.
- · In the room, not over Slack.
- · Trust first. Systems after.
- · Leave the team taller than I found them.
How I think about operations
Five principles I work to.
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Process before tools.
Tools amplify whatever process you already have. If the process is broken, the tool will scale the problem. We map the workflow first, choose the system second.
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Single source of truth, always.
If two systems hold the same data and disagree, neither is trusted. One canonical record per entity (customer, deal, employee, invoice), and everything else is a view.
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Owner, not committee.
Every critical responsibility has one named owner. Shared ownership is the same as no ownership. Spans of control stay healthy.
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Cadence beats heroics.
Weekly, monthly, quarterly. Predictable rituals that the leadership team can run without me. Heroic late night sprints are a sign of a missing system.
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Leave no dependency on me.
I succeed when the team can run the operating system without my login. That's the whole point.
The promise
The best fractional engagements end with you saying "we don't need her any more, and that's the whole point."
Find out where you score
Take the Ops Scorecard.
The same framework I use on day one of every diagnostic. Ten minutes, instant report, no obligation.