Strategic clarity and alignment · AI and data initiatives
Aimed right. Actually delivered.
Strategy that solves the right problem, and gets delivered. You will get the technology right. Whether it was aimed at the right thing, and whether your organization can carry it, is what decides the return.
Free, 15 minutes. A conversation about where you are. Or see the ways in.
New territory
There is no playbook for this yet.
You are running a transformation with real money and real people attached. A data or AI investment. A restructure. A new operating model. And you do not have a chief data officer to hand it to, because you cannot justify the hire.
The technology has a roadmap. The human side has your instincts, because nobody has written that part down yet. Everyone is figuring this out at the same time, including the companies selling you the tools.
Sometimes you do not need an answer yet. You need to know which question is worth the money.
Established companies and funded startups, roughly 50 to 1,000 people. Big enough that the decisions carry real weight. Small enough that there is nobody in-house who has made them before.
What I usually find
The problem is underneath the strategy.
It is almost always one of these. Someone in your company already knows about every one of them. The work is making it safe to say.
- Every team is busy and the roadmap is full. You cannot say with confidence that the work in flight produces what you promised.
- The dependency that blocked you last month was knowable in week two. Nobody was looking across.
- You have asked for risks. You get status.
- You have paid for this analysis before. It is in a deck somewhere. Nothing changed.
- The analysis supports the decision. The decision was made first.
- Your best people spend their week on rework and meetings about the work.
- You find out something is broken when it is already a blocker.
What separates the 12%
Fragmented organizations survive. Whole ones deliver.
It is almost never the technology. AI can draft the analysis and the plan. What it cannot do is orchestrate one: twelve leaders, one roadmap, and every function moving in the same direction. That is the human layer, and the return is decided there. It is the layer I work on.
Most AI investments return nothing. A few return a lot. The CEOs and the data leaders say the same thing about why.
What the CEOs report
56%
have seen no return from AI
12%
have seen real return
PwC 29th Global CEO Survey2026 · 4,454 CEOs across 95 countries
What the data leaders report
91%
name culture and change management
9%
name technology
MIT Sloan Management Review2025 · Hoque, Davenport and Nelson
Meet Lara
I sat in the seat that sees every function.
Thirteen years in enterprise data and analytics, at Twilio, at Rackspace, with teams on four continents. Data and IT are the one place in a company that sees the entire cross-section. Marketing sees marketing. Operations sees operations. Data sees all of it, because eventually every decision becomes a row in a table.
From that seat I have led hundreds of integrated planning efforts: the initiative down to the task, and across every function it touched.
I did it as the right hand to CIOs, CDAOs, and CMOs, in the room where the call gets made.
I left the politics and the posturing, the rooms where the same decision comes back for the fourth time and the wrong problems get the attention, to work with companies that actually want the change to stick.
20+ years leading teams through change · 13 inside enterprise data at Twilio & Rackspace · Right hand to CIOs, CDAOs, CMOs · Teams across four continents · McKinsey Academy Hispanic & Latino Executive Leadership Certification · ICF Trained Coach
The approach
How the work goes.
Three steps. Skip the first and the other two get expensive.
Most engagements answer the question you asked. This one starts by checking whether it is the right question. What you are actually solving for. What you promised your stakeholders. Which use cases earn their place and why. And whether the data is guiding the decision, or ratifying one that was already made. I find it through empathy interviews: one-on-one conversations where people tell you what never gets said in meetings.
Solve it inside one function and you get a solution for one function. The plan has to run in two directions: integrated, from the initiative down to the task, and cross-functional, out through every function it touches. Dependencies mapped before they are blockers. Risks named while they are still cheap. Solutions that help every team, rather than fixing one at another's expense.
A plan nobody adopts is a document. A model nobody uses is a report collecting dust. This is the work that changes that: the workflows, the training, who owns what, and moving your team on to the work only they can do. It scales, your team uses it, and it keeps running after I leave.
Proof
Seven thousand people, one source of truth, still running twelve years later.
I learned this at enterprise scale and bring it to companies your size. Most of this work is confidential, so I describe the shape rather than the client. References available, privately, on request.
I aligned a 7,000-person company around one shared source of truth, with real adoption rather than mandate, and led it as the internal consultant with no outside firm. Twelve years later it still runs, because the people made it theirs. The measure of every engagement since has been the same: it stands on its own, without me.
I led the integrated planning across a 700-person scaled agile transformation: twenty-five value streams, fifty-one teams, and every dependency between them. Finding the dependencies and risks while they were still cheap tripled throughput and cut lag and errors by more than 70%. Then I moved the development managers, business analysts and product managers off status reporting and work assignment, and onto strategic priorities, cross-functional relationships, and developing their own teams. That was agile. It is the same migration AI is about to ask of you.
The model worked. It scored churn risk accurately, and it was interesting information collecting dust on a shelf. I built what turns a score into an action: the workflows, the enablement, the training. Who looks at it, when, and what they do about it. The regions started acting on the outputs weekly. Then it went into performance plans and quotas, which is the point where a model stops being a report and becomes how the company works.
The strategy was sound and the team was capable. The same three decisions came back to the table every month and nobody made them, because the disagreement underneath had never been said out loud. The work surfaced it, named who owned which call, and the decisions got made. Two of them went the way nobody expected.
The ways to work together
The ways in.
Two shapes. A standing relationship, where I am the person you call before the decision. Or a defined project with a start and an end. Most start with the Blueprint. Some already know what they need.
High-level read · free
The Read
Ten questions, five minutes, anonymous. The same ones I ask in the first hour: what you are solving for, why those use cases, and whether the data is guiding the decision or ratifying one already made. You get one of five patterns named, and the first question to ask.
Free
Get The ReadLeadership alignment · one day
The Room
A one-day working session that gets your leadership team clear together: what you are solving for, what you promised, which use cases matter, and where you are quietly disagreeing about all three. You leave with one version of the answer, held by everyone who has to deliver it.
The details
- Half day or full day, on site or remote
- Empathy interviews beforehand, so the day is built around your team and I arrive knowing where the disagreement sits
- On the day: decision rights, what is not being said, and the shared language that keeps the plan intact
The math
Twelve leaders quietly disagreeing about the goal costs you every week, in every meeting where the disagreement stays underneath the table. One day and $10,000 against months of an aligned-sounding team pulling in three directions. You are already paying for the misalignment. This is paying once, to end it.
The core engagement
Diagnosis · roadmap
The Blueprint
Nobody tells a survey the truth. Empathy interviews across the levels do, so you get the real opportunity named, what it will take to deliver it, and the high-level integrated roadmap: the bones of the plan, in order. You leave with a plan that survives contact with your organization, and the confidence to promise it.
The details
- Empathy interviews at every level
- A clear look at the data and the decision rights
- The conversations people have been avoiding
- A high-level integrated roadmap: the initiatives, the sequence, and what each will take
- Yours to build with me or without me
The math
The initiative this examines is usually budgeted at ten to fifty times its cost. If the work is aimed at the wrong problem, the diagnostic did not cost you $35,000. It saved you the initiative. A dependency found on the roadmap in week two costs a conversation. The same dependency found in month six costs the quarter, the credibility of the promise, and your best people to rework.
Orchestration · implementation
The Realignment
Advisory-led orchestration. Your team does the work, and I hold the through-line: cross-functional planning that brings the roadmap to life, the decision rights, and the change management at every gate. You leave with an operating rhythm your team runs without me, because they built it.
The details
- The roadmap from the Blueprint, brought to life through cross-functional planning: initiative down to task, across every function it touches
- Built on SAFe principles and techniques, adapted to your organization rather than installed by the book
- Phased and gated, with a definition of done and a decision point at each phase, so you can stop at any gate
- The workflows, the enablement, the training, and who owns what
- I work through your team rather than around it
- Where a phase needs depth I do not have, I bring in senior specialists from my own network, people I have worked with directly. You approve anyone before they start, and you are never handed to a junior bench
The math
Compare it to the alternatives you have already priced: a big firm bills this at three to five times more and leaves a deck. A failed transformation costs the full budget, plus the year, plus the harder-to-count part, which is that the next transformation starts with a team that watched the last one fail. This one is phased and gated, so you can stop at any gate. The risk is scoped by design.
Nonprofit, or working on something that does not fit these? Read the FAQs.
Ongoing advisory
The Sounding Board.
You are the most senior person on this. Your team needs you steady and your board needs you certain, which leaves nowhere to be uncertain out loud. The person who has done this before works somewhere else.
That is the seat this fills. Fractional access to a senior data leader who spent twenty years as the right hand to CIOs, CDAOs, and CMOs, in the room where these calls get made. Some months that looks like advisory, working the decision in front of you. Some months it looks like mentorship, working on how you lead through something nobody here has led before. Most months it is both.
The details
- Rapid response by email and voice, rather than immediate access
- Counsel and decision support. Implementation is scoped as its own engagement.
- Decision support before the call gets made, not a review after it
- A standing monthly session if you want one, or none at all
- Month to month, no minimum, cancel whenever it stops being useful
- I take a limited number of engagements on purpose, so I know your business without you re-explaining it
The math
A fractional senior data leader runs $15,000 to $25,000 a month. A full-time hire you cannot justify runs more. A wrong call made without either is the only thing more expensive.
By request
$5,000
Per month · month to month
I take a limited number of engagements on purpose, so I carry your context month to month and you never start from scratch. Tell me what you are running and I will let you know when a seat opens.
Someone to think it through with who has sat on the other side of these decisions.
Practice areas
Four areas the work draws on.
Every engagement is scoped to what you actually need, and most end up pulling from more than one, because the people, the plan, and the data rarely stay in their lanes.
Team dynamics & culture
Every plan is executed by people. I work on what actually happens between them: who speaks up, what goes unsaid, and why the same disagreement keeps coming back. Standing up new teams from nothing, and rebuilding trust in ones that have stopped working, across geographies and time zones.
Strategic planning & execution
Most plans are lists of intentions. I build the connective tissue: how fifty teams' work adds up to one outcome, and what has to be true between them for any of it to ship.
Data & AI
The technology is usually the part that works. I work on what you are actually solving for, whether the numbers guide your decisions or justify them, and what your organization is ready to run.
Ownership & accountability
Who has the final call, why decided things keep getting revisited, and, increasingly, what the automated work is allowed to do on its own.
Questions
Before you decide.
Established companies and funded startups, roughly 50 to 1,000 people. Big enough that the decisions carry real weight. Small enough that there is nobody in-house who has made them before.
Yes. Registered 501(c)(3) organizations under $25 million in operating budget receive 25% off The Room, The Blueprint, and The Realignment. Same scope, same work, reduced rate. Ask me on the Clarity Call.
Most interesting problems do not. Tell me what you are looking at and we will scope it together. The odd ones are usually my favorite.
Most of this work is confidential, so I describe the shape rather than the client. References are available privately, on request.
A ten-week executive program
The Human Layer.
A working group of six to eight senior leaders, each running something nobody in their company has run before. Ten weeks on the work that decides whether it delivers: asking the right questions, building the plan that connects, and operationalizing it so your team runs it without me. You bring the transformation you are actually running.
Every other way of working with me delivers my thinking to you. This one leaves you able to do it yourself, with a handful of people you can call when it gets hard.
Founding cohort · Seats close February 15
$7,500
Founding seat · $12,000 standard
Ten weeks, March through May. Six to eight seats. Applications close February 15 and every one is read personally. Director level and above.
Start on your own
Start with a read.
Anonymous, and entirely on screen. The Read takes five minutes, tells you which of five patterns your company is actually in, and sends you the full read by email.
Free · five minutes
The Read
Five patterns: the Wrong Problem, the Inherited Promise, the Ratified Decision, the Disconnected Plan, the Crowded Roadmap. Ten questions, five minutes, and one pattern named.
Make the strategy real.
A short, free conversation about what you are trying to deliver, and what it would take.
Free, 15 minutes.
Free 15-minute Clarity Call.
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