The Operator
Two decades in the CFO and Controller chair, across multiple PE-backed mid-market companies and industries. I learned what works and what breaks by sitting in the chair, not by consulting on it. Decision Architecture is what I extracted from that experience.
The Arc
The pattern repeated across company after company, industry after industry, over two decades. The chart of accounts stops reflecting the business. The forecast becomes a fiction exercise. Working capital eats cash faster than the P&L generates it. And underneath all of it, capital decisions get made in Slack DMs and hallway conversations, with no record of who decided or why.
Different company, different industry, same structural breakdown. That repetition is what made the pattern visible, and what made it fixable.
Case Studies
These are composite teaching scenarios, illustrative patterns drawn from two decades of operator experience, not accounts of specific client engagements.
Case 1, Pediatric practice group, ~$25M (composite)
- Situation
- A founder-led pediatric practice group at roughly $25M in revenue across several clinic locations. The founding physician still personally approved nearly every spend over a few thousand dollars, equipment, hires, lease commitments. Growth had outrun the founder's calendar. Decisions queued behind one person, and the queue was getting longer than the runway.
- What I changed
- Built a written decision rights matrix: what the practice administrator could commit without sign-off, what required the founder, what required the board. Defined the decision logic for capital spend, new location versus equipment versus provider hire, so each request was weighed against the same criteria. Set a quarterly decision review so commitments were revisited against what actually happened.
- What it produced
- Routine spend stopped queuing on the founder's desk. The group could open locations on a predictable cadence instead of waiting for the founder to surface. The founder got out of the approval loop for anything below the threshold, and back to the decisions only the founder could make.
Case 2, Multi-state professional services, ~$70M (composite)
- Situation
- Growing 40% a year. The P&L looks healthy. Cash is quietly running 30 days behind, and DSO has crept from the low 40s toward 70 while everyone celebrates revenue.
- What I changed
- A working capital dashboard owned by finance and reviewed weekly. Explicit DSO targets by customer segment. A payables strategy aligned to cash timing.
- What it produced
- DSO pulled back toward the high 40s. A multi-million-dollar working capital gap closed. Board meetings that open with the cash conversion cycle, not the revenue number.
Case 3, Scaling services, ~$120M (composite)
- Situation
- A large war chest sitting idle, “waiting for the right deal.” Months of capital uncommitted. Multiple acquisitions debated, none executed, because there's no written logic to decide between them.
- What I changed
- Force a written capital deployment hierarchy with the board, organic growth, acquisitions, debt reduction, shareholder return, in priority order. Set trigger-based review dates. Document the assumptions behind each path.
- What it produced
- Capital deployed against a clear thesis. Weak acquisitions killed at diligence on disciplined criteria. The right deal closed on better terms because the logic was set before the pressure hit.
Where this applies
PE-backed and founder-led companies between $25M and $150M, across healthcare services, professional services, multi-state operations, and M&A integration.
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