Strategic Advisor & Fractional COO
You hired people
to run things, and
you’re still running them.
Twenty-plus years running real operations — now helping founders build the structure their growth already needs.
Andrea Florescu — Strategic Advisor & Fractional COO, Seattle
I’ve run the operation.
Now I help founders
stop being the operation.
Before I advised anyone, I ran operations — more than twenty years of it, including as Director of Operations for a $5 million restoration company.
That's the difference. I'm not teaching theory from the outside — I've been the one accountable when the operation had to run.
The pattern
You are still the one who approves things you hired other people to decide.
You spot the problem first.
You remember what everyone agreed to.
That is not always a people problem. Often, the business has never clearly defined who owns the decision, the work and the follow-through.
What I actually do
Management infrastructure —
a heavy phrase for something
fairly ordinary.
Who owns what. Who decides what. Who is accountable for finishing. Most of the work is deciding those three things, then making sure they hold once I'm not in the room.
Decision rights
Your managers need to know which calls are theirs, which they should simply make, and which genuinely need you. Those boundaries are rarely written down anywhere.
Operating rhythm
A dependable cadence, so problems surface, decisions get made, and follow-up happens whether or not you're in the room. It isn't more meetings.
Follow-through
Big initiatives stall when nobody has both the authority and the time to push them through. Sometimes that's me. Sometimes it's making sure the right person on your team can do it without me.
The main relationship
Fractional COO
I take the COO seat, part-time and on contract. I'm in your leadership meetings, making the operating calls with you rather than writing memos about them — and when something is decided, I'm accountable for it happening.
It's for companies where nobody has the seniority or the time to run operations, and that person keeps turning out to be the founder. This is the work I'm best at.
Fractional COOWays to work together
Operations Consulting
You already know something is wrong. A handoff keeps failing, or the same problem keeps returning in a different form. I look at how the work actually happens, not how the process document says it happens, and tell you what to change.
Operations ConsultingSystems & Technology
Your tech stack was assembled one urgent decision at a time. I look at what you're paying for, what creates work nobody needs, and what should go.
Systems & TechnologyBusiness Modernization
Sometimes the outdated part isn't the software. It's manual habits, one person's memory, or processes that exist only because that's how they started. We rebuild what's underneath at a pace your team can absorb.
Business ModernizationWhat changes
A business that can grow
without needing more of you.
- Fewer decisions come back to you.
- Your managers decide the things they own instead of checking.
- A priority still holds the week after the meeting.
- Information reaches the people who need it without you passing it along.
- The work that matters gets finished without you pushing it.
A real example
The bottleneck was
surprisingly basic.
A restoration company had grown faster than its structure could support. The business ran on the founder's memory — project stages, client promises and who was doing what. Handoffs between office and field were inconsistent, and onboarding varied by who had time to train.
We mapped how work actually moved through the business — not how it was supposed to — and built simple, repeatable steps for the highest-friction handoffs. Communication rhythms between office and field were established that didn't route through the founder.
What goes wrong is rarely on the org chart. It's usually a piece of work that two people each assume the other one has.
What changed
Handoffs became more consistent. New hires came up to speed faster. The founder regained visibility without being the hub of every conversation.
Read the case studiesHow this starts
You don’t need a diagnosis to start a conversation.
If the business has grown and too much of it still runs through you, that's a good enough place to begin. Tell me what's going on, and I'll tell you straight whether I'm the right help. If I'm not, I'd rather say so than sell you something you don't need.
Common questions
What is a fractional COO?
A part-time, contracted operations leader. You get someone senior running the operating side of the business without hiring a full-time COO.
How is that different from consulting?
Consulting answers a question and hands you a plan; your team carries it out. As a fractional COO, I'm inside the business while the work gets done, and implementation is my responsibility too.
How long does an engagement last?
There's no set length. It depends on the business and how much of the work I'm carrying. We agree on the shape of it before anything starts.
Do you work remotely?
Mostly. I'm in the Seattle area and prefer to be on-site early on when it's practical. Some things only show up in the building.
Start a conversation.
No pitch, no pressure — a straightforward conversation about where the business feels heavy and what clearer execution could look like.
Start a conversation