I did not leave because I was pushed out. I did not leave because I was struggling. I left because I had spent two years doing informal consulting work on the side — helping friends of colleagues, taking on small process audits through a contact at the Midwest Operations Alliance — and the informal work had grown to the point where leaving made financial sense. I had four active clients when I gave notice. I had savings. I had a plan.
Daniel knew all of this. He was there for the calculations. We sat at the kitchen table with a spreadsheet on a Sunday afternoon in March and we mapped out monthly income projections, the three-month cushion I was keeping in savings, the list of clients I was bringing with me. He asked good questions. He was supportive. He said he was proud of me.
He knew.
What I do now, specifically: I come into midsize service companies — facilities management, regional logistics, professional services — and I look at how their operations actually run versus how they think their operations run. I interview department heads. I shadow frontline staff for a day or two. I map the workflows. I find the friction points — the handoffs that drop things, the processes that made sense in 2017 and do not make sense now, the approval chains that exist because someone once made a mistake and no one has removed the patch. Then I write a report and I deliver a set of recommendations and I offer implementation support if they want it.