Business Performance Diagnostic
A focused assessment of performance constraints, operating model, decision rights, leadership capacity, measures, and the next 90 days.
Business Performance
Business performance and operating leadership when the company needs to change.
For owners, CEOs, and boards facing stalled performance, unclear accountability, a leadership gap, integration, or a growth model that no longer works.
For owners, CEOs, and boards facing stalled performance, unclear accountability, a leadership gap, integration, or a growth model that no longer works.
Mandates are led by Ghaleb El Masri, founding principal. COO and Chief Transformation Officer roles inside multinational businesses; Joint Global Executive MBA, Columbia Business School and London Business School.
A diagnostic conversation, not a pitch. You leave it with a view on whether this is an operating mandate at all — including when the answer is that it belongs somewhere else.
Or call the principal direct:
(647) 631-1205Four ways to begin
A defined first mandate, not a catalogue.
Growth or Turnaround Sprint
A time-bounded mandate to stabilize priorities, restore operating control, and execute a defined performance agenda.
Part-Time Operating Lead
Senior operating ownership for a leadership gap, transition, integration, or special situation, with explicit decision rights, cadence, measures, and handoff.
Operating Model or Integration Mandate
A scoped intervention aligning structure, accountability, processes, governance, and execution across teams or combined businesses.
Where owners start
Six versions of the same sentence: this is not working the way it used to.
Find the one that sounds like your business. Each names the first thing that actually happens, before any programme is designed.
Outgrown
The company outgrew how it is run
Decisions still route through you because nothing else is trustworthy enough to route them through. Managers escalate what they should be deciding, and the founder is the single point of failure for the whole operation.
First move · Map where decisions actually get made, then move the ones that should not be yours
Margin
Revenue is up and margin is not
Growth is being absorbed by manual work, disconnected systems, rework, and coordination cost. The P&L says the business is bigger; it does not say it is better.
First move · Find where the money is leaving between the sale and the delivery
Bench
A key leader left, or was never there
A COO, CFO or MD seat is empty, or filled by someone who has outgrown it or not yet grown into it. The work does not stop while you run a nine-month search.
First move · Cover the seat with an operator while the permanent answer is built
Integration
You bought something, or were bought
Two cultures, two systems, two sets of expectations and one set of synergies somebody has already promised. Value written into the deal gets destroyed in the first two quarters or not at all.
First move · Day-one operating model, then the integration sequence behind it
Capital
You need to be investor-ready and are not
A raise, a sale, or a lender is on the horizon and the business cannot yet produce the reporting, governance or narrative that survives diligence.
First move · Read the business the way the other side of the table will read it
Turnaround
The trajectory has to change
The model that got the business here does not get it further, and everyone senior already knows it. What is missing is a plan with an owner, a sequence, and someone who stays until it is done.
First move · Honest diagnostic first — including whether a turnaround is the right frame
Published outcomes
Four mandates, with the numbers attached.
Clients are anonymised by standing policy, so industry and scale stand in for the name. Every figure below is the published figure from the engagement brief it links to.
Healthcare network · $5.7M revenue · 4 locations
Founder-led, no formal strategy, fragmented operations — and a pandemic arriving mid-mandate.
Revenue up 38% year over year
30+ strategic initiatives launched, 2 new locations, telemedicine live in under 4 weeks.
14 monthsRead the engagement brief
Manufacturer · $200M revenue · 600+ employees · 3 plants
Margin leaking into manual processes and disconnected systems.
$4.2M saved annually
Order-to-ship time cut 35%, system uptime at 99.7%, customer service productivity up 40%.
12 monthsRead the engagement brief
Mining technology · UK-registered · enterprise clients
Blue-chip product, revenue concentrated in a handful of renewals, no go-to-market infrastructure — and an eventual acquisition to be ready for.
100% customer retention sustained
First structured go-to-market, a World Gold Council endorsement, $280K new revenue pipeline, and the reporting discipline an acquirer expects.
18 monthsRead the engagement brief
Healthcare network · scaling phase
Growth outpacing the operating model, with no standardisation to scale onto.
Clinic footprint from 3 to 6
60+ SOPs implemented, patient NPS held above 72, governance brought to Series-B standard.
14 monthsRead the engagement brief
Every published brief is in the case studies. Where a mandate is not published, it is because the client has not agreed to it being published — not because it went badly.
Suitability
When this is the right call — and when it plainly isn’t.
Mandates of this size go wrong far more often from bad fit than from bad execution. The right-hand column is the one worth reading first.
A 1205 mandate
- Owner-led or owner-controlledA founder, family owner, or a board and sponsor who can actually authorise a change in how the business runs. Mandates that need three committees to approve a decision do not work here.
- The problem is operating, not functionalIt cannot be solved by hiring one specialist, because it sits across leadership, accountability, process and system at once.
- You want operators, not a deckThe engagement is scoped to leave something running differently. If a written recommendation would have been enough, you did not need us.
- There is enough runway to finishMandates on this page run months, not weeks. The business has to be able to fund the change and survive the disruption of making it.
Not a 1205 mandate
- You want a strategy documentA slide deck with a recommendation and no one accountable for delivering it is a genuinely reasonable thing to buy — from a strategy house, which is not what this is.
- The business is insolventFormal restructuring, CCAA proceedings and creditor negotiation are the work of licensed insolvency practitioners and restructuring counsel. Operating turnaround assumes a business with time left.
- You want one seat filled and nothing else touchedIf the need really is a single executive with a clear remit, our fractional C-suite page is the cheaper and more honest answer.
- The mandate is a headcount decision already madeEngagements used to lend outside credibility to a restructuring that has already been decided are declined. It is not independent, and it does not survive contact with the people it affects.
- Nobody senior agrees there is a problemWhere the leadership team is not aligned that something has to change, the first mandate is that conversation — not an operating programme that will be quietly resisted.
Common questions
What owners ask before they engage.
What is the difference between growth advisory and a turnaround?
Mostly urgency and how much room is left. Growth work adds structure to a business that is working — governance, operating rhythm, accountability — so it can carry more weight. Turnaround work changes the trajectory of a business that is not working, usually against a deadline set by cash, a lender, or a board. The diagnostic is much the same; the sequencing and the tolerance for disruption are not.
Do you do the work or advise on it?
Do it. Engagements are scoped so that an operator sits inside the business for the duration and is accountable for the change landing, not for the recommendation being made. Where a mandate genuinely only needs an outside opinion, we will say so rather than sell a longer engagement.
How long does a mandate run?
The published engagement briefs on this page ran between 12 and 18 months. Mandates of this kind end when something is genuinely running differently, not on a date — although a deal, a lender, or a board deadline can compress the clock. The written scope sets the expected duration and the review points before work begins.
Who actually does the work?
Each proposal names the engagement lead, delivery roles, responsibilities, review points, and current availability before the mandate is accepted. Ghaleb El Masri leads the initial diagnosis and scope; the proposal states his role in the specific engagement.
What does it cost?
Mandates on this page are individually scoped and quoted after a diagnostic conversation, because the range across a 6-month integration and a 14-month operating rebuild is too wide for a published band to be useful or honest. You receive a written fee and scope before any work begins.
What happens on the first call?
A working conversation, not a pitch. We want the shape of the problem, what has already been tried, who internally agrees it is a problem, and what has to be true in twelve months. You leave with a view on whether this is an operating mandate, a single-seat hire, or something that belongs with counsel or an insolvency practitioner instead.
Related practices
From the same family. Often scoped together.
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Canadian market-entry operating support offered as a scoped business-performance mandate; legal, tax, and regulated advice remain with qualified advisors.
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Family Business Advisory
Professionalize. Without losing what built it.
Operating-model, governance, and succession support for family enterprises, accepted as a defined business-performance mandate.
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Describe the business. We will tell you what it needs.
We reply to enquiries within one business day. Fit, availability, timing, and proposed next steps are confirmed after review.
Or call direct:
(647) 631-12054 published briefs behind this page