Creating clarity in complex landscapes
When the view is clouded, I help you spot what’s crucial and turn complexity into structure and direction.
Business Partner to Founders bringing strategic advice, fractional operational leadership, coaching and hands-on delivery, depending on what the situation needs.
10+ years across operations, market entry, expansion and strategic implementation: from building local operations from scratch, to leading international teams and multi-market functions.
If any of this sounds familiar…
- Everything still runs through you.
- Your business is growing faster than the way you work.
- There’s too much happening, and it’s getting hard to decide what actually matters.
- The team knows its craft, but nobody is connecting the pieces.
- The idea is strong but the business around it isn’t built yet.
- You’re working with someone close to you, and the lines are blurring.
- There’s a hole in the team and no clarity on what should fill it.
…then I might be able to help
Some of my best work happens when I am embedded in small founder-led businesses and leadership teams preparing for growth: from one founder bringing in a partner, to a team scaling beyond 10 people, to a small leadership team responsible for a larger organisation.
Much of my previous work happened at transition or overlap points like these: when growth had outrun the way a team worked, responsibilities no longer matched reality, another leadership layer was needed, strategy changed, or something had to launch before every system was perfect.
Work with founder pairs or trios, and with couples building a business together, is particularly rewarding: decisions, roles and relationships overlap there, and it draws on both business and coaching experience.
What I do
The generalist in the room
Most teams I work with are full of people who are very good at their own thing. What’s often missing is someone who holds the whole picture and connects the pieces: the business, the people, and the work nobody has the capacity, experience or perspective to pick up.
01Make sense of it.I listen, observe and look past the first problem statement to understand what is really going on.
I start with the business as it is today: how it got here, what has changed, what is working, and what is getting in the way. Then we can decide what actually matters and where to focus.
Practical examples
- finding the root cause behind a recurring problem
- clarifying priorities and direction
- testing the business model, growth idea or new market
- turning mission, vision and values into practical choices
02Get people aligned.I listen to the people closest to the work and the customer, bring their perspectives together, and help turn them into clear decisions and ownership.
That can mean better conversations, clearer roles, stronger leadership, or simply making sure the people doing the work are heard before decisions are made.
Practical examples
- clarifying founder, leadership and team roles
- coaching founders and leaders through decisions and leadership challenges
- facilitating workshops and difficult conversations
- helping people work from their strengths and take more ownership
03Put structure around it.I turn direction and ownership into a simple way of working.
The aim is not more process. It is enough structure to make the work easier: clear priorities, decisions, meetings, tools and follow-up.
Practical examples
- setting up a simple working rhythm for priorities and follow-up
- defining roles, responsibilities and decision points
- improving meetings and basic processes
- setting up lightweight tools and practical working documents
04Make it happen.When something needs doing, I can take ownership and see it through.
I step into gaps where there is no clear owner, not enough capacity, or a piece of work needs someone to keep it moving.
Practical examples
- running a market entry, launch or cross-functional project
- taking ownership of a workstream that has no clear owner
- recruiting and onboarding the person who will take over
- stepping into a live operational problem and driving it to resolution
Experience behind the work
Local and central functions
Led local delivery operations handling thousands of orders daily, and central functions supporting logistics teams across 14 international markets.
Leading through a network of leaders
Managed international functions through senior team leaders, supporting their development and their teams’ growth in the organisation.
From hands-on builds to global programmes
Market launches, organisational design, operational transformation and new-business implementation.
What changes
Your business
is easier to run.
You know what matters.What can wait, and what’s just distracting.
- You see decisions, risks and capacity gaps early enough to prepare instead of react.
- The pace becomes more sustainable: ambitious, without constant urgency.
- You get more attention back for the work only you can do.
Less depends on you.Ownership is clear, so fewer things run through one or two people.
- Founders and leaders spend less time chasing, checking and firefighting.
- People know what they own, and new hires get up to speed faster because roles and ways of working are clear.
- Growth is easier to absorb because the business does not have to reinvent how it works at every stage.
Decisions turn into progress.What you agree on gets followed through.
- Important conversations happen properly, instead of ending in polite agreement.
- Decisions are clearer, ownership is visible, and fewer things disappear after the meeting.
- More of what you decide actually gets carried into execution.
A business that’s more focused,
more resilient,
and still unmistakably yours.
In their words
“Ula helped us clarify our roles, put people back where their skills are most useful, and create a simple working model that has actually held.”
Wingman Aviation →
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“What I valued most was that she kept the conversation practical and free of unnecessary jargon. She asked the questions we hadn’t asked ourselves and helped us settle in an afternoon what we’d been trying to work through for a year.
She doesn’t hover. She turns up, asks the awkward question, makes sure something gets decided, then checks it got done. That is rarer than it sounds.”
“Ula gives us structure without making things heavy. She keeps us focused on what matters now, while making sure we don’t lose sight of where we’re going.”
Wingman Aviation →
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“One of the biggest things she brings is perspective. When we get pulled into ideas, operational detail or day-to-day noise, she brings us back to why we started and helps us work out what is actually worth pursuing.
She also creates the rhythm we need to keep things moving: regular check-ins, clear priorities and space for the bigger strategic conversations. Things don’t disappear into meetings, and we spend less time revisiting the same questions.”
“Ula helped me get much clearer about which projects I actually want to take on and what I want to build next.”
christophholzknecht.com →
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“Instead of looking at every opportunity on its own, we worked out what a good project looks like for me from both a business and a personal perspective.
I’m much more confident choosing projects, and I have more time for the work I actually want to do.”
Ways to work together
From a single session to an ongoing role
There isn’t one fixed format. If you’re not sure what you need, that’s usually the first thing we work out.
One-off consults and coaching sessionsA single working session on one question, decision or difficult conversation.
For a specific question, decision or moment that doesn’t need a wider engagement. A session to think something through properly, get a second opinion, prepare for a difficult conversation, or work coaching-style with a systemic lens.
Ongoing advisoryA regular outside perspective, without adding another role.
We meet on a consistent schedule around priorities, decisions, emerging problems and what’s coming next, with deeper involvement when something important comes up.
Fractional and embedded supportMe inside your working rhythm for an agreed period.
For when you want senior operational capacity without hiring a full-time role. I join meetings, shape priorities, follow up on decisions, solve problems and take ownership of selected pieces of work, with the level of involvement flexing as needed.
Focused projects or sprintsOne piece of work with a clear outcome and an end date.
Clarifying roles, developing a business model, preparing a launch or market entry, mapping the customer journey, drafting the business terms of a framework agreement, facilitating an offsite, or getting an important project unstuck.
Interim or gap supportStepping in temporarily when a key role or capability is missing.
I keep things moving and use the period to work out what the business actually needs: redistribute responsibilities, redesign the role, or hire and onboard someone new.
Note on costsPricingShaped around the situation, not a fixed package.
The price of every engagement depends on the level and duration of my involvement, and the type of work.
Sometimes that means a single working session; other times, it means being part of the team’s rhythm for several months. Before I propose anything, we’ll work out together what level of support actually makes sense for your situation.
Impact-driven organisations and early-stage teams: if a consultant feels out of reach, don’t hesitate to contact me anyway, I keep room for this work and price it differently.
Selected experience
Building from zero
Built the first operational last-mile delivery hub for Pyszne.pl from scratch across facilities, recruitment, processes and live operations. Within five months, the operation was performing significantly ahead of its original business case.
Scaling quickly
Led the expansion of the Polish market last-mile delivery operation from 4 to 11 cities in three months while continuing to run existing operations and a national organisation of 40+ people plus a courier fleet of 1,000+.
Building organisations around changing needs
Built a European Expansion Operations function for Logistics at Just Eat Takeaway.com. When company strategy shifted, developed a broader mandate and created and led a 30+ person Operational Excellence organisation across 10 countries supporting global markets.
Turning a new business model into live operations
Led the logistics-operational implementation of Delivery as a Service, working across Product, Tech, Finance, Tax, Legal, Customer Service, Sales and Operations to take the concept into live pilots with paying customers.
About
Strategic thinking, grounded in how people actually work
I spent more than a decade working across business setup, operations, expansion and implementation, including seven years in operational leadership at Just Eat Takeaway.com.
I started close to the ground: building an operation from scratch, hiring teams, setting up infrastructure and solving the practical problems that appear when something has to work for real. From there, I moved into national expansion and a UK market launch, then into building and leading international teams and multi-market functions. Later, I moved into the global innovation environment, where I led the operational implementation of a new business line, bringing together logistics, sales, technology, finance, tax, legal and customer service to make it work in practice.
That progression, from doing the work myself to leading managers, designing organisations and coordinating senior stakeholders, strongly shapes how I work today.
Today, that means working with founder-led businesses and small teams by listening first, building only what the situation actually needs, and preparing the business for growth and change. Structure should make work easier, not become another layer of work in itself.
I also care about how people experience the business day to day. Ambition does not have to mean constant urgency, and strong performance should be sustainable for the people doing the work, as well as for the wider environment around them.
Quick facts
- Originally from Poland
- Based in the Austrian Alps
- Working across Europe
- Working in English and Polish
- Conversational in German and Italian
- Basic communication in Czech
- Lean Management — Green Belt
- AI in Business Development (Google)
- Systemic Coaching Diploma in progress
Personal aspiration
What I want to contribute to is a world where people understand themselves and each other better, find meaning in what they do, and build fairer, more peaceful and environmentally sustainable ways of living.
My role in that is to understand, connect, develop and enable the people and organisations capable of making that change real.
Get in touch
Let’s start with a conversation.
Send me a short message about what’s going on. I’ll get in touch personally, usually within 48 hours.
If your situation is something I could help with, we can plan a longer conversation at no charge and with no obligation.
If I’m not the right person, I’ll say so, and I may know someone else who might be able to help.
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