Three things, installed and run beside you until your team runs them without me. What you're buying is capacity: a company that runs without heroics. What's left on your plate afterward is the judgment only you have, and more room for it.
A weekly executive meeting off a live scorecard, a monthly business review, quarterly planning that ends in commitments. I stand the scorecard and reporting up from your real systems; agents keep them maintained at near-zero cost, so the cadence doesn't die of paperwork the way most do. I run the first sessions live, then your ops lead runs it with my async review; the transfer gate is three solo weeks.
Yours: every decision. The cadence surfaces them; it never makes them.
One page: every area's now, next, goal, and stretch, color-coded, correlated to the annual plan and the financial plan, one accountable owner per row, cascading into what each executive signed up for, scored on evidence. This is the artifact I ran my own company on, and the place the whole system either becomes real or becomes theater.
Yours: the strategy, and your executives' ownership of their rows.
The board pack, the calendar that ends night-before assembly, the investor-update rhythm that works between rounds. Rendered off the live system, not assembled by hand. The judgment about what to say, and preparing your team to walk the board through their own sections, is the work. I also design the owner slots themselves: the accountability chart and role scorecards that make one-owner-per-row true.
Yours: the relationship, and your executives' voices in the room.
Every engagement carries written exit criteria from day one: the system is installed, your team runs it, I step out. If you want me longer, that's a new decision, not a drift.
Turnarounds where payroll is at risk. Pure line-ops mandates: I govern the executive layer, I don't run departments (a build mandate is the one deliberate exception, and it takes my deep slot: see Special Projects). Companies under ~20 people with no forcing event: you likely need distribution, not process, and I'll say so. Anyone who wants a report instead of a system. And engagements where a board wants a report on its CEO dressed up as help.
Tell me what's outgrowing you.
ken@foxheft.com