01
Operational turnaround
Temporarily taking ownership of an account, product, or operating organization that is off track.
- Diagnosis, key trade-offs, and a recovery plan.
- Mobilizing teams, milestones and a monitoring system.
Missions
Fractional operating leadership — Fractional COO.
ACACIA provides fractional operating leadership — acting as a Fractional COO — to take temporary ownership of a critical responsibility, bring execution back under control, and deliver against agreed outcomes.
Who this is for
For B2B organizations that are already structured, with existing management and operating teams, but facing a level of complexity their current operating model can no longer absorb: multiple countries, multiple product lines, multiple major accounts, an organization that has grown faster than its operating model, or the aftermath of a recent acquisition.
For the leaders of these organizations — and, in some situations, their shareholders or boards.
ACACIA is not intended to be a company's first generalist operations hire, nor a long-term substitute for a permanent COO.
A mission typically begins when a critical responsibility exceeds the organization's current capacity to execute.
- A strategic account is deteriorating toward a potential loss, and no one can say when the decline began.
- A product accumulates years of client-specific variants: every new deal now requires an exception, draws in multiple teams, and increases delivery risk.
- An acquisition brought two organizations together, but processes, data and responsibilities remain incompatible.
- A new function needs to be built deliberately, rather than inherited from the previous organization.
The common thread is taking ownership of the gap between decision and execution: clarifying trade-offs and ownership, establishing a steering cadence, and carrying the trajectory through to agreed outcomes.
Types of mandate
02
Executing a transformation
For a transformation whose direction is clear but whose execution is not.
- Turning the decision into an executable path, and arbitrating dependencies.
- Establishing governance and leading execution through to the agreed outcomes.
03
Building a function
Building a function until an internal leader can take it over.
- Organization, responsibilities and a stabilized steering system.
- Variable intensity by phase — design first, then build and transition.
04
Operational performance
For an organization whose scale, cost base, or complexity now exceeds the capacity of its operating model.
- Identifying levers, arbitrating priorities.
- Leading a program combining process, automation, organization and, where relevant, AI.
- Explicit economic objectives and budget accountability.
Case — Strategic account
On a strategic account in serious decline, AI-assisted analysis of five years of correspondence revealed a gradual deterioration: increasingly adversarial language, growing asymmetry, the disappearance of a shared vocabulary between client and vendor. That signal reshaped the diagnosis and the recovery plan.
The relationship was restored and the account retained.
How it works
Senior executive accountability, calibrated to the real intensity of the situation, without imposing the structure or cost of a permanent executive role.
Each mandate has an explicit scope, intensity and horizon, agreed before it starts — no open-ended availability, no mandate without explicit objectives.
The pace is set by phase: concentrated during diagnosis and trade-offs, more sustained during a function build or an active turnaround.
ACACIA does not replace the teams already in place. The mandate clarifies decisions, builds on what the organization already does well, and prepares from the outset for sustainable internal ownership.
ACACIA steps in when a situation justifies temporary executive accountability — and a bounded mandate can bring execution back under control, build a lasting capability, or deliver a verifiable outcome.
Discuss a mandate →