Board-Level Thinking, Sale-Ready Ops – with Sam Wood

Your ops might be ticking along just fine.

But what if your founder got sick tomorrow? What if your top client left? What if you had to make a big decision with zero visibility on the numbers?

You might not be planning to sell your agency – but you should run it like you are.

Because when you adopt that mindset, you zoom out. You stop firefighting. You start building a business that runs without you.

This week on The Handbook, Harv sits down with Sam Wood – fractional COO and founder of consultancy Ottesu – to talk about how agencies and consultancies can apply board-level thinking without needing to set up an actual board.

Because a business that’s sale-ready is a business that’s well run.

In this episode, Sam breaks down the five areas every agency should be reviewing regularly – whether you’re building to exit or just want better control of the ship.

Here’s what we get into:

• Why applying board-level thinking doesn’t mean setting up a boardroom – and how to start
• How to define and operationalize strategy (it’s not just a slide in onboarding)
• Why culture starts with leadership behavior (not beers and pizza)
• How to build capability and resilience so your business doesn’t depend on heroics
• How to reduce risk and spot gaps in capability before they break you
• The one performance metric every service business should be tracking if they want to be profitable

Whether you're an ops lead or MD, this one’s packed with practical ways to futureproof your agency.

Additional Resources:

Follow Sam Wood on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-wood-gaicd-9023a54a/ 

Check out Ottesu’s website: https://ottesu.com.au/ 

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra 

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