CASE STUDY
Redesigning and scaling a startup social impact consulting firm
Summary
A self-funded social enterprise kept turning away clients because the team couldn't keep pace with demand. The CEO's answer was to hire. Research revealed something more urgent—the firm was losing money on every engagement. The Head of Operations was already holding the entire delivery system together manually, and adding headcount would have made the organization more fragile, not less. The system was the problem.
I led the effort to redesign the organization, resulting in a 10x revenue increase with only a 2x headcount increase.
My role
project lead, facilitation, research, problem formulation, collaborative ideation, prototyping, implementation
What was true
The service was roughly 80% custom on every project—expensive to produce, impossible to staff reliably, and inconsistent for clients. There were no systems for onboarding, project management, or quality control. Senior people were buried in routine work with no time to improve anything. The firm was generating a maximum of $83 per hour of staff time and had no mechanism to change that.
What worked
We uncovered the real problem and got the team invested in solving it. Then, we redesigned how the firm worked as one connected system while:
Standardizing the service without eliminating the flexibility clients valued. The ratio flipped from 80% custom to 80% standard, with a streamlined customization layer on top.
Building operational infrastructure so the team had what they needed to deliver consistent work without the head of operations holding everything together.
Launched an apprenticeship program that solved the capacity problem, built a talent pipeline for future full-time roles, and produced intellectual property that was then used to develop an additional high-margin service.
Outcomes
Financial performance: Revenue grew 10x while headcount only doubled.
Stakeholder experience: Client and participant satisfaction consistently hit 9/10 — across projects, regardless of who staffed it.
Operational alignment: The team had clarity. Each full-time consultant could lead 3x more projects. Trained facilitators grew 8x. Geographic reach expanded without increasing overhead.
Leadership focus: The Head of Operations stopped being the connective tissue, and the system held on its own and was able to shift focus toward building the future of the company.