The problem
Tyran is the Managing Director of Temple Air, a UK HVAC services business. By the time we started the engagement, the business had grown to the point where Tyran was the operational layer. Every quote ran through him. Every hire decision ran through him. Every customer escalation ran through him. The KPIs that mattered lived in his head, not in any dashboard.
That worked when the team was a handful of people. It stopped working as the business scaled. The team was waiting on him for decisions, sales were getting bottlenecked at quoting, and there was no structured way for the leadership group to see what was working and what wasn't. Tyran knew the answer wasn't "work harder." He needed someone to help him build the operational layer he'd never had time to build.
What we did
The engagement ran as a standard fractional COO retainer (1–2 days a week, 3-month minimum). Three workstreams ran in parallel.
1. A real KPI dashboard and monthly reporting rhythm
We started by getting the numbers out of Tyran's head and onto a single, real dashboard. Revenue, pipeline, gross margin per job, average days-to-quote, customer satisfaction, team utilisation. Whatever Tyran needed to know to run the business. The dashboard updated weekly, and we built a monthly reporting cadence around it so the leadership team had a shared, current view.
2. A proper sales pipeline process
Quoting was the biggest bottleneck. We built a structured sales pipeline process: stages, owners, expected timelines, and a clear handoff from sales to delivery. Quote turnaround times shortened. Forecast accuracy went up. Tyran stopped being the only person who knew where each deal stood.
3. Team restructure with clear ownership
The team had grown but the structure hadn't. People were doing whatever needed doing on the day, which meant nothing was truly owned by anyone. We restructured into clear functional ownership (operations, sales, delivery, finance) with named accountabilities and weekly cadence for each. The team knew what they owned, and the MD stopped being the only escalation point.
What changed
Three months in, the business felt different.
- Tyran was no longer in every operational decision. The team made calls inside their functions and escalated only when they needed to.
- The leadership group was running its own monthly review, off a dashboard everyone trusted.
- Sales had a real process. New deals moved through stages instead of sitting in Tyran's inbox.
- Tyran's time freed up enough to actively work on growth, not just keep up with the day.
"Before working with Mitch, I was wearing every hat. He built out a proper plan for how the business should run as we scale. Now I have clear KPIs, a proper pipeline process, and I can focus on growth instead of firefighting."
Tyran, Managing Director, Temple Air
What we'd do differently next time
Two honest notes. First, the dashboard work was right but I underestimated how long it would take to get the data sources clean enough to trust. Build that buffer in next time. Second, the team restructure landed well, but I'd run more 1:1s with the function leads in the first month next time to surface the cultural questions earlier.
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