Everything takes longer than it should | David Kernan
David Kernan Removing operational friction so businesses can scale.

Everything takes longer than it should.

I follow one piece of work from start to finish, find where it gets stuck, put a number on the cost, and fix it.

Show me what's stuck

24 questions. Five minutes. Your answer on the screen at the end.

Talk it through 25 minutes, straight to the point.

What clients say

  • In the early stages of the project David helped the project get off the ground by providing proof of concept prototypes to support discussions and address concerns raised at executive level…
    Project managerFood manufacturing group
  • …where Dave excels is his ability to take the “problem statement” and provide a clear solution which not only answers the original query but provides a holistic view of the problem and its impacts across the wider business.
    Senior e-commerce leaderGift and experiences group
  • He is a creative and innovative problem solver who took on any challenge. He’s a strong commercially aware communicator whose opinions and contributions were highly valued within the company.
    SVP Go-To-MarketConsumer group

We keep hiring. Why isn't it getting easier?

0 of 6 marked

None of these are people problems. They're what it looks like when a way of working has been outgrown.

Pick the thing that keeps getting stuck.

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One piece of work. I follow it across every team and system it touches, and find where the time is actually going. It is almost never where people think.

Don't automate a mess.

Most of what slows a business down is work that stopped being necessary and nobody removed. Automating that just produces the wrong answer faster.

  1. Follow one piece of work all the way through

    Start to finish, across every team it touches.

  2. Find where it actually gets stuck

    Which is rarely where the complaining is coming from.

  3. Put a number on what that costs

    Hours, days waiting, revenue arriving late, the cost of the workaround.

  4. Delete the steps that shouldn't exist

    The cheapest fix is the thing that stops happening.

  5. Give it an owner and make the systems fit

    One person accountable end to end, and numbers you can explain without rebuilding them.

  6. Automate what's left, if it's worth it

    Only once the process is stable and someone owns it.

  7. Check it actually worked

    Measured before, measured after. If it did not move, it did not work.

I've done the work, not just advised on it.

Before consulting I ran the functions rather than advising on them: product, data and engineering for an enterprise AI platform; data and business systems in a scaling international company; reporting for a €50m banking programme; analytics for a €500m group across 14 markets.

Three ways to start

Find what's stuck

One piece of work, followed end to end, until we know what is actually causing it and what it costs.

Fix what's slowing you down

A bounded piece of work that takes the cause out — process, ownership, systems, automation, whatever it needs.

Run it until it doesn't need me

Senior cover across the teams nobody owns the gaps between, with a date for handing it over.

Find out where the time is going.

Twenty-four questions about how work actually moves through your business. You get a written answer: where it is getting stuck, what that is costing you, and what to change first.

  • Where work is stalling, and why
  • What it is costing you now
  • The one thing to fix first
  • What to do this week, this month, this quarter
  • What you can do yourselves without me

Five minutes. No call needed.

What keeps landing back on your desk?

You'd be working with me directly, start to finish.

Show me what's stuck

Talk it through 25 minutes, straight to the point.