From answering the request to owning the commitment

Mandate

Make the company’s commercial scope, delivery capacity and service economics consistent as the founders delegate executive leadership.

Outcomes

• Introduced an explicitly priced six-week handover option in a twelve-engagement pilot.
• Completed the planned exit from C$11m of annual low-contribution licence resale.
• Retained some support work with 18 of 22 organisations affected by that exit, while reporting the four losses.

Decisions in context

Taking the chief executive position meant explaining choices to shareholders whose relationship with the company predated mine. I could no longer resolve a difficult commercial question simply by specifying what operations needed. The licence-resale decision required me to address purchasing influence, client convenience and the founders’ attachment to an activity that had helped build the business. I began presenting the strongest case against my preferred option alongside its expected economics. My seven direct reports retain responsibility for their functions, including technical standards and client delivery. I am accountable for the commitments those functions make together and for explaining where the business is deliberately becoming smaller. The role has also made me more careful about attribution: a successful engagement belongs to a team and a client relationship, even when I authorised the approach that made it possible.

Reason for the move

Appointed internally after five years leading operations; remains in this position.

Mandate

Coordinate service coverage and transition capacity without making informal specialist availability part of the operating model.

Outcomes

• Mapped bilingual support competence to contracted windows and escalation types.
• Delayed an evening extension by ten weeks to establish reliable staffing.
• Created a joint commercial and operations review before new service-hour commitments.

Decisions in context

Operations brought together colleagues whose priorities could be individually reasonable and collectively incompatible. Sales wanted a broader support window, service managers wanted continuity and experienced specialists wanted predictable time away from work. I had to make the trade-off explicit rather than asking the most capable people to absorb it. The 2018 evening-service review was a turning point because it showed how a reassuring company total could hide a fragile promise. I supported recruitment and training expenditure and accepted a later launch. The operating budget covered service delivery costs, not the full company revenue or investment programme. During this period I also developed managers who could explain a capacity constraint without treating a client request as an inconvenience. The next step into company leadership followed that work, but it required a broader commercial judgement than this functional role alone had demanded.

Reason for the move

Selected by the board to succeed the outgoing chief executive in January 2021.

Mandate

Establish how receiving teams would take responsibility for client environments with uneven inherited documentation.

Outcomes

• Introduced practical demonstrations using the records supplied at handover.
• Separated missing documentation from unresolved operating responsibility in transition reports.
• Required receiving-team ownership to be named before a transfer was described as ready.

Decisions in context

I joined Velmoraine because it offered a chance to work on the transfer of responsibility itself, rather than encounter its defects only after a software implementation. Some inherited environments arrived with extensive documentation that had not been maintained; others depended on a few employees who could explain exceptions verbally. I asked our receiving teams to demonstrate a realistic task using what they had been given. That exercise was more revealing than another declaration that the handover checklist was complete. My authority covered the transition function and its agreed budget. I could recommend a later transfer, but changes to client commitments required commercial approval. Learning to make that recommendation early, with specific evidence and a proposed remedy, helped me build trust beyond my team. It also exposed the recurring cost of knowledge transfer that nobody had included in the original proposal.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief operating officer as the company combined service and transition management.

Mandate

Prepare client teams to adopt administrative software and connect project acceptance with usable operating knowledge.

Outcomes

• Added receiving-staff practice sessions before implementation teams departed.
• Recorded local exceptions that did not appear in the standard demonstration.
• Established an explicit route from implementation questions to the permanent support team.

Decisions in context

Moving into implementation initially felt like an opportunity to prevent the support problems I already understood. It soon became clear that preparation involved more than teaching the correct sequence of screens. Client staff had different authority, different local procedures and different opportunities to attend training. My twelve specialists needed to recognise those conditions without rewriting the product for every organisation. We began asking the permanent client team to complete a routine task while our specialists observed, then recorded where the agreed procedure did not fit. I could adjust team allocation and delivery preparation within the expense budget; I did not approve product changes or final commercial terms. The role taught me to explain an operational exception in language that sales and engineering could act on. I eventually wanted responsibility for transitions across broader environments, which led to the move to Velmoraine.

Reason for the move

Left for a broader service-transition remit at Velmoraine in July 2009.

Mandate

Investigate reported problems, verify the client environment and preserve a usable record of the resolution.

Outcomes

• Recorded version and access details before recommending a procedure.
• Separated reproducible software faults from local configuration questions.
• Prepared case notes that another analyst could use without repeating the investigation.

Decisions in context

I entered the support team immediately after college and learnt to be cautious about an answer that sounded familiar. Two clients could describe the same symptom while using different versions or permissions. My first responsibility was to establish what the caller could actually see and do. A senior colleague showed me how to write a case note that separated the reported problem, the checks I had performed and the action authorised by someone else. That discipline mattered when the next shift inherited an unfinished request. I did not set financial objectives or make contractual promises, and I sometimes needed help recognising when a question belonged with the client’s own administrator. As I gained experience, I joined preparation sessions before installations. Those visits made me interested in the moment when a project team leaves and ordinary support becomes the client’s only route to an answer.

Reason for the move

Promoted into implementation management following increasing responsibility for client preparation.