Founder-led & PE-backed

Everyone at the table is right. That's why nothing finishes.

In 14 days you get one list of everything competing for your team, a decision on every item, and a system your leaders keep running after I leave. If all three aren't there on day 14, you don't pay.

Book a call

14 daysOne fixed feeMoney back guarantee

The RegisterFully Built by Day 14

ScoreInitiativeSizeCall

9.2

ERP migration

Active

8.9

Custom build for top account

Active

8.7

Sales & ops alignment

Active

7.1

Pricing overhaul

Queued

5.5

Onboarding rebuild

Active

4.0

Custom reporting build

Cancelled

Delivery load6 / 6 · At capacity

The account request earned second place instead of jumping the line, and the pricing overhaul went to the queue because of it. Further down, the reporting build died because the ERP above it already does the job.

$5Mof a $50M base

That's what came back when a 1,000-person company put every initiative on one list for the first time. Four businesses it had just acquired, multiple backlogs, no way to compare any of it. The system is still running a year later, without me there.

How that worked →

What's actually happening

Three numbers from this year.

65%

of PE firms report replacing a portfolio company CEO during the holding period. Only 9% say they rarely do it. 83% say unplanned turnover stretches the hold, and nearly half say it cuts returns.

AlixPartners · March 2026

95%

of enterprise AI pilots produced no measurable P&L impact against $30–40B spent. The cause wasn't the models. It was integration into how the company actually works.

MIT NANDA · State of AI in Business

20%

global employee engagement, the lowest since 2020. Manager engagement fell nine points since 2022, and managers are the layer that turns strategy into priorities.

Gallup · 2026

Three different reports. One failure.

Companies are committing to more change than their people can absorb, and almost nobody runs the arithmetic before they commit. The work isn't wrong. There's just too much of it pointed at the same people, and the layer that was supposed to sort it out is the layer that's burning out.

How it shows up

You've probably already diagnosed this as something else.

"I think we need to hire."

Maybe you do. But you can't prove it yet, and neither can the person asking. So you either approve on a feeling or decline on one.

"One of my leaders is the problem."

Usually not. They're the one with a real case who keeps making it, because there's no other way to get their work moved up.

"The team got slower."

They're carrying more than they were last year. Nobody wrote down how much more, so it looks like a performance problem instead of a math problem.

"Our biggest customer asked for it."

So it went straight to the top. Nobody checked what it displaced, and what it displaced was part of why two other accounts stay.

"We already decided this."

You did. It came back three weeks later because nothing was written down about what it beat, or why.

None of those are people problems. They're the same problem five different ways: there's no shared list, no agreed way to rank it, and no number for what your teams can actually carry.

What this actually is

Your company runs two kinds of work at once.

Run the business

Keeping the lights on

Nobody argues about this and it happens whether or not anyone is watching.

Invoices go out
Tickets get answered
Payroll runs
The product stays up

Change the business

Everything else

All of it is to enable better BAU. All of it requires behavior change from the same people. Almost nobody has one list of it.

The ERP migration
The pricing overhaul
The comp plan rebuild
The build your biggest customer asked for
The reporting build nobody owns

Business as usual keeps the lights on. This decides whether the house gets another room, or an upgraded kitchen first.

I don't touch the first column. What I do is put everything in the second column in one place, ranked, with a line drawn where your capacity actually runs out. Most leadership teams have never seen that list in one piece. When they finally do, the first thing they notice is how much of it is the same work twice.

Where this usually lands

It sits on top of whatever you're already doing.

I'm not replacing your plan. I'm the thing that sequences and decides what the plan can actually hold.

Complements

A PE 100-day plan

The value creation plan says what to do. It doesn't say what the company stops doing to make room. Day 1 to 14 of the 100 is the cheapest possible time to find out ops is already running at 150%, instead of finding out in month five.

Complements

A merger or acquisition

Two companies, two backlogs, two sets of priorities, and no shared way to compare any of it. Both sides defend their own list because there's nothing else to defend it against. The integration value shows up this year or it doesn't.

Complements

A new C-suite exec

You inherited a list you didn't build and can't defend yet. Cutting things in month one makes you the new person who cancels things. If an outsider runs the room instead, the team owns the outcome with you.

Complements

EOS or any operating system

EOS decides how you run a quarter. It doesn't decide what belongs in it. The Filter picks the Rocks, EOS runs them. A team already running a V/TO and a real Level 10 rhythm is the most seamless condition available for install, because the discipline is already there.

Don't book the call if

You're under about 20 people and can still hold the whole list in your head. Or you want someone to own execution afterward, because I install it and leave. Or you can't get your leadership team in a room twice inside two weeks (1hr and 3hr). Or you're shopping for software, because there isn't any.

The part nobody warns you about

Nobody on your team has to defend this. Not the rollout, not the calls.

A decision layer costs political capital twice.

First when it shows up, because somebody has to stand in front of every team and explain why they're suddenly doing something new. Then again when it works, because work gets stopped in a room, in front of the person who asked for it.

Normally both bills land on you, or on a COO you hand it to. Most companies never get past the first one — whoever got handed the rollout gets tired of defending it by week three, and the whole thing quietly goes away.

The rollout

I run a working session with each team on their own ground. I explain why it's happening, teach them the scale, and we fill in their list together. Nobody from your leadership has to sell it to anyone.

The scoring

When a number is inflated, I'm the one who says so. Not your COO, and not the person who has to work with them again on Monday.

The room

When something gets cancelled, I'm the one standing there when it happens, with the comparison on the wall behind me.

Your teams fill it in to the best of their ability. That's the whole ask of them. You endorse it at kickoff and ratify it at the workshop, and on day 15 the person who introduced the process and took your VP's project away doesn't work here anymore.

What changes

What your week looks like on day 15.

Your next quarterly

Starts with a list your leadership team already agreed to, in order. You're approving, not refereeing.

When something new lands

There's a place to put it and a way to answer it that isn't your gut and isn't a meeting.

When you say no

Nobody takes it personally, because they watched the comparison that produced it. And they can act on it. A maybe leaves a team waiting. A real no sends them looking for another way.

When you're ready to hire

The case is already written. Three quarters of declined work with the reason on each one.

None of this is dramatic. That's the point.

A good CEO is quietly noticeable. The company just runs, decisions hold, and nobody is arguing about what matters this week. The calm is the product. The list is only how you get there.

One ranked listEverything competing for your team, scored against what they can staff.

A call on every itemActive, queued, or dead. A name and a date on each.

The system, yoursNo license, no software. About an hour a week.

How it works →

Where it came from

This didn't start as a consulting product.

Nathan HarrisFounder & Principal
Left Brain Consulting

I built the foundation inside a $200M rebuild of a $2B business unit at a Fortune 50, with EY and 20+ execs in the room and more than 50 app dev teams all pointed at the same calendar. I chaired the board that decided what got through and what didn't. That company spent real money to keep that level of talent around, and this is the part of it that actually did the work.

Then I took it out, cut it down to the part that mattered, and ran it at a $100M ARR company that had just bought four other companies. About a thousand people, multiple backlogs, no way to compare any of it against anything. Every initiative went on one list and the calls got made out loud.

Eight years of that, from EVPs running $2B lines of business down to line managers just trying to hold a team accountable, and it was the same problem every time. What I'm actually selling is neutrality. The score starts the conversation and your leaders end it, but that only works if whoever's running the room doesn't care which department wins. Usually nobody inside the company can.

Same system, smaller room, and it goes in a lot faster.

25%+of effort duplicated before one intake existed

397requests onto a single ranked list

$5Mfreed of a $50M expense base

Still runninga year later, through a leadership change

The guarantee

All three, in 14 days, or you get the whole fee back.

Days

Not a discount and not a credit. The whole thing.

You keep everything either way — the list, the scores, and the system behind it — whether or not I earned the invoice.

What I'm guaranteeing

The work and the date. A scored, ranked, capacity-checked list with a decision on every line. Nobody can guarantee which initiatives you pick, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

What I need from you

Your leadership team in a room, twice. If your calendar can't hold that in the next two weeks, I'll say so before we start instead of after.

The questions I get every time

Six things people ask before they book.

Tap any of them.

We already run EOS. Does this replace it?

No. It sits on top of it, and EOS companies are the easiest installs I do. The three gaps it fills are all things EOS says about itself: Rocks are progress and not maintenance, so standing load never gets counted. The 80% completion target tells you the quarter was overloaded after it already was. And force-ranking a fourth Rock is a conversation, so it goes to whoever argues best.

Isn't this just a spreadsheet?

The spreadsheet is free, it's at the bottom of this page, take it and run it yourself. What you're paying for is somebody who can get twelve teams to score honestly and a leadership team to kill something in front of each other. That part doesn't come in a file.

14 days seems fast for something this big.

It's fast because I'm not learning your business. Your people supply every input. I supply the standard, the capacity math, and the fact that I don't care who wins. It's ten working days of my time and about two hours of yours.

My team is already underwater. They don't have time for this.

One hour, once. That's the whole ask of anyone outside your leadership team. If they're underwater, this is the thing that finally measures it, and the measurement is what lets something come off their plate.

What if we don't agree with the ranking?

Then you override it, out loud, with everything on the table. The score starts the conversation and your leaders finish it. The number was never the point. The point is that everyone watched the same comparison before the call got made.

What happens after you leave?

About an hour a week. New requests get scored the same way as everything already running, and there's nothing new to stand up to do it. If it needed me to keep working, I built it wrong.

One conversation, no deck

Name your top five. In order. Out loud.

Then have each of your leaders write theirs down separately and compare them. The gap between those lists is what you're paying for every quarter, and it's the only qualification test that matters.

Thirty minutes · No questionnaire · Nothing to install

Bring six things your team is fighting over. We'll score them live and you'll leave with a ranked view of the conflict, whether or not we ever work together.

Book a call

One fixed fee, agreed before we start · No retainer, no hourly, no change orders
Full refund if all three aren't delivered in 14 days

One-pager · PDF

How the install actually works

The 14 days, the scoring, what happens in the workshop. Everything this page left out.

The system · XLSX

Run it yourself, free

The whole thing. Take it, use it with your team, keep it. No email required.