An outside read on how your company actually runs.
Most companies know something is off before they can name it. Seven Point Advisory looks at the people, the product, and the process together, and tells you what is actually wrong, what to fix first, and what to leave alone.
Which one sounds like you?
What that usually turns out to be
People, product, and process, in that order
Nearly every operating problem shows up in one of the three and originates in another. Looking at them separately is why the same issue keeps coming back.
People
The part most reviews avoid, and usually the part that decides everything else.
- Whether the managers are actually managing, or still doing the job they were promoted out of
- Who is in the wrong seat, and who is being wasted in the right one
- Turning strong individual contributors into leaders instead of losing them
- What the organization should weigh at this size, and where it has grown out of habit
Product
Whether product is being run as a function with a point of view, or as an intake queue.
- How decisions get made, and who is allowed to say no
- The relationship between product, engineering, sales, and delivery
- What the roadmap says about the business, and what it says about the loudest customer
- Where the strategy and what is actually being built have quietly separated
Process
Where work stalls, what depends on one person's memory, and what should not exist at all.
- Handoffs between functions, which is where most work goes to die
- Onboarding, delivery, and support, from the customer's side rather than the org chart's
- What to automate, what to eliminate, and where AI genuinely helps
- Measurement that tells you whether things are improving or just busy
A conversation, a first look, then whatever it needs
Engagements are scoped to the situation rather than to a template. Some are a few weeks. Some become an ongoing operating role.
A conversation
Thirty minutes, no cost, no deck. You describe what is bothering you and I tell you whether it is something I can help with. If it is not, I will say so and point you somewhere better.
A first look
Scoped to the situation. Interviews across the leadership team and the layer below it, a review of what you already measure, and a written readout that names the real problem, the ninety day fixes, and the things worth leaving alone.
Whatever it needs
Sometimes the readout is enough. More often the useful part is having someone stay through execution, in a fractional operating role or as an advisor to the leadership team. Ongoing or capped, your call.
Paul McGee
Three decades of operating experience in technology companies, most of it running several functions at once. Customer experience, support, product, and delivery operations have all reported to me at the same time, which is the reason I do not diagnose every problem as belonging to whichever function I came from.
At LiveVox, an 81-person cross-functional organization through the company's scaling into the public markets. More recently, SVP of Operations at a private equity backed software company, with the same four groups reporting in. Before that, a long run in contact center technology, telephony, and the operations that depend on them.
The work I am best at is people. Teaching individual contributors how to be managers, growing managers into leaders who are more than they were, and being honest with a CEO about who should and should not be in a seat. The rest of it, product, process, and where AI actually belongs in an operation, follows from being able to see the whole picture at once.
Fractional Chief Operating Officer, Winspeed
Alongside Seven Point Advisory engagements, Paul serves as fractional COO at Winspeed, designing and operationalizing the firm's onboarding and professional services infrastructure. Winspeed customers and prospects can also work with him directly.
Tell me what is not working.
The first conversation is thirty minutes and costs nothing. Bring the version of the problem you would not put in an email.