OPERATING GROUPBreak away, take the lead.
Breakaway brings three experienced executives into the work with you. We help manufacturers and private equity owners strengthen performance, build capability and deliver results that continue beyond our involvement.
Breakaway brings together three experienced executives with complementary backgrounds in enterprise operations, organizational capability, large-scale change and business performance.
Our collective experience is the foundation of the business. We understand what it means to carry responsibility, make difficult decisions and remain accountable for outcomes, because each of us has done it inside the business, not from the outside looking in.
We work with organizations to strengthen performance, build capability and deliver results that continue beyond our involvement. We focus on the problems that actually move the needle, and we stay involved until the work holds.
Most performance problems cross the lines between strategy, people, process and technology. Our services are built to work together, so the fix does not stop at the edge of one department.
Turn strategy into operational reality.
Operating model design, operational discipline, enterprise resets and hands-on implementation. We work from the plan to the floor and stay with it until the results show up in the numbers.
Strengthen the people who make it happen.
Practical leadership and organizational capability at every level, from frontline supervisors and construction leaders to senior executives. This is not simply leadership training. It is strengthening people's ability to lead, make decisions and deliver.
Experienced leadership when it matters.
Experienced executive and operational leadership brought directly into the business where additional capability, capacity or accountability is needed, without the time and risk of a full search.
Connect people, technology and operating systems.
Technology and processes cannot be separated from the people expected to use them, the decisions they make or the environment they work in. We connect people, leadership, operating systems and technology so the organization functions as one.
A new system fails when the crew does not trust it. A good process fails when the supervisor was never shown how to lead it. We design Execution, Capability and Fractional work with people, operations and technology in view at the same time, because that is where results are won or lost.
We work with manufacturing leaders who run the business and with the private equity firms who own it. Often, both are in the room.
Our primary industrial market. We work with executives who need performance to get better and stay there: labor cost per unit, throughput, service levels, turnover and the leadership capability to hold the gains.
Operational intelligence, transaction-related execution, enterprise performance and sustainable value creation for firms buying, holding and preparing to sell.
Every engagement follows the same path. The scope changes. The standard does not.
We start with the business as it is: on site, with the people doing the work, and in the numbers. We find the real problem before we recommend anything.
We focus on the few issues that actually move performance. Every recommendation comes with the plan, the owners and the measures to carry it out.
We stay involved through implementation, working alongside your leaders where the work happens, not reporting on it from a distance.
We leave standards, routines and capability in place so the results continue after we leave. That is how we measure our own work.
We will never hand you a strategy without the plan to execute it.
Candid answers, including the uncomfortable ones.
Experienced people in the work, not only on the proposal.
Scope and measures agreed before we start.
Capability left behind, so you do not need us to keep it going.
Between us, we have run plants, distribution operations, major change programs and businesses of our own. Each partner brings a different path to the same standard.
Kait has spent more than 20 years working alongside executive leadership teams on post-acquisition stabilization, operating model design, organizational effectiveness and enterprise-wide change. Her work spans acquisitions and carve-outs, Day One readiness, large-scale enterprise system rollouts and AI-enabled operational intelligence.
Industries: energy and refining, industrial services, construction, manufacturing, technology and agriculture, across North America and Europe. Managing Director of a SocioTechnical practice for a global firm.
Assad has spent about 25 years running and strengthening manufacturing operations. Since 2015 he has led Infinity Operational Excellence, working with PE-backed platforms and mid-market and Fortune 500 manufacturers, and advising investors on manufacturing operations and supply chain risk.
Previously: COO and SVP Operations, PLZ Aeroscience. Senior Director of Operational Excellence, Kraft Heinz. VP Operations, Varel International. VP Quality and Lean Six Sigma, Accuride.
Richard has owned and run businesses for 35 years and has spent recent years on the floors of manufacturing and industrial services operations. He has diagnosed 16 operations on site, supported operational due diligence on private equity acquisitions, and led a distribution center to first in its network with half the people.
His focus is the layer most firms skip: the frontline supervisors who run every shift. He builds leadership into how a plant runs and measures it on the scorecard: fewer recordables, less scrap, higher output and lower turnover.
Background: Former U.S. Marine. Founder of Sharpened Impact. Bestselling author of three books, including Sharpen the Spear: Lead from the Front and The Invisible Layer. Host of 350 long-form podcast episodes.
Examples from our partners' own operating experience. Client names are withheld.
In five months the two shifts went from 50 people to 25. The site ranked first for product unloaded over six weeks with half the people and equipment, ending another site's three-year run. Worker per-piece earnings tripled and turnover stopped.
Pay stayed at the higher level, and labor cost per unit still fell below where it was before COVID. Service got better, and safety, quality and people measures all got better after the restructuring.
Company details and figures altered to protect confidentiality. Directional results preserved.
Approximately 2,000 workers demobilized in under seven hours, using ground transportation and five aircraft, with zero safety incidents. The site was remobilized within two weeks, and the project went on to reach startup on schedule.
Client, project and contractor identities withheld.
We understand the consequences of decisions because we've been accountable for them.
Thoughtful and honest conversations, even when they're difficult.
Trust, integrity and respect are crucial.
Experience brought into the work, not just recommendations.
Sustainable capability and performance beyond our involvement.
We will listen, ask hard questions and tell you candidly whether we can help. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.