Execution & commercial projects
The decision is made. Now someone has to see it through.
I step in as the person on the hook for a commercial initiative actually happening. A new market, a new business area, a new commercially driven project. I pressure-test the ambition, pull together the people who have to deliver, and stay with it until there are customers, numbers and a rhythm you can run yourselves.
Typical situations
When the strategy is agreed and nothing much happens
Sometimes the direction is clear. Other times the idea still has to meet real customers, a real market and the reality inside the building. Either way, someone has to connect the ambition to the work that actually moves the business, and get things moving among people who already have plenty on.
01
Everyone agrees, nobody owns it
The initiative sits between sales, product and delivery, and it only moves when somebody raises their voice.
02
It looks good on a slide and has never met a customer
The new market or business area has been agreed, but nobody has tested whether anyone will actually pay for it.
03
The pace is set by the meeting calendar and the bottlenecks.
People are working, but with no clear mandate every blocker waits for the next management meeting, or for the one person who is busy with something else.
How I can step in
Three ways to put someone on the hook
The role has to be clear from day one. Either I take it, or I work closely with whoever has. A vague mandate is itself one of the most common reasons an initiative stalls.
I drive it
I take it on
I move the work forward across sales, product, delivery and technology. You get one person to go to, and I get the mandate to make the decisions the work needs.
Programme lead
Several tracks, several owners, one result
Commercial programme leadership at senior level. I keep the whole thing joined up, get decisions made while they still matter, and turn progress into something the executive team and the board can actually read.
Alongside you
Next to the person driving it
If you own the initiative but want someone to think out loud with, and someone to keep you at it, I work next to whoever is accountable without taking the role off them.
From opportunity to operations
Not a strategy document. A change that works.
I work close to the leadership and to the people who have to deliver. I make it visible who is delivering what and when, so a slip gets caught while there is still time to fix it. And we keep asking whether the work is creating something a customer will pay for, not just whether the plan is holding.
Figure — The value gap between decision and delivery
What separates the two lines isn’t the quality of the strategy. It’s whether someone stayed with the work until the decision turned into something customers value.
01
Tie the ambition to customer value
We get specific about the effect you want, what the customer gains, the assumptions underneath it and the things you’re deliberately not doing, before it all gets complicated.
02
Turn the strategy into a shared plan
Priorities, accountability, dependencies, mandate and how decisions get made all line up behind the result.
03
Make the progress visible
A clear working rhythm puts deliverables, contributions, risks and blockers out in the open. Better decisions follow, and the cross-functional work keeps moving.
04
Learn, adjust, embed
What you learn from customers and from your own people turns into action as it arrives. Accountability, skills and ways of working get handed over, so the value outlives the project.
What you get
Progress you can see, and value the customer notices
Execution isn’t more meetings or a smarter-looking project plan. It’s a clear line from customer value through the choices, the mandate and the people to the deliverables that move the business.
Clarity
One shared picture of the value
The ambition has become a concrete customer outcome and a scope you can actually steer by.
Momentum
Visible contributions, faster decisions
Everyone can see what’s moving, who’s contributing, and where a decision or a blocker needs someone to act.
It sticks
A way of working that keeps paying off
What you’re left with is a working practice and the ability to keep going, not just a project plan marked complete.
Relevant experience
I’ve been on the hook myself
I’ve run cross-functional commercial execution in a place where a target isn’t a target until it has a rhythm, and I’ve built my own ventures from idea to paying customers. I know both ends of it: the scale, and the version where there is nobody to delegate to.
Microsoft
markets, go-to-market and cross-functional execution
Danish SaaS
team, delivery model and how it was organised
My own ventures
from idea to an offer that works
Engagement
When it needs one temporary mandate
A business-critical initiative sometimes needs someone to own it for a set period, with the handover designed in from the start.
Next step
Got an initiative that isn’t moving fast enough?
Tell me what needs to work, what’s in the way, and who owns it today. I’ll tell you what I’d do, and whether I’m the right person to do it.