COOs
Delivering operational excellence without burning out your people
As Chief Operating Officer, you hold the organisation together. You’re responsible for execution, efficiency and outcomes, making sure strategy turns into delivery, day after day.
Your challenge is capacity and control: balancing day-to-day operations with the constant demands of transformation. Hero projects appear, resources stretch, priorities collide. Without clear governance and demand management, operations can shift from strategic to reactive.
Too much structure can stifle innovation; too little can create chaos. The key to success in this environment is designing systems, rhythms and cultures that enable sustainable performance, where people stay engaged and success doesn’t depend on heroics.
This is where changemaker can help: we bring operational clarity, delivery discipline and people-centred change management to help COOs run transformation that’s efficient, transparent and human.
Change management consultancy for COOs
changemaker is a UK-based change management consultancy that partners with COOs and operational leaders to design, deliver and embed transformation across complex organisations.
We combine commercial and operational rigour with a deep understanding of people. Our experience spans finance, manufacturing, automotive, technology and services. What differentiates us from our competitors is the way in which we connect process, data and behaviour to make change last.
Our work integrates three disciplines: Change Design, Change Delivery and Human Change. We use these to create operational excellence that’s sustainable, scalable and people-powered.
Change Design
Prioritising what matters most
Through Change Design, we help COOs turn multiple demands into a single, prioritised plan.
We assess initiatives for strategic alignment, value and feasibility, creating portfolio frameworks that show where to invest effort and what to pause.
Our Navigator mode supports leaders with clear direction, aligning governance, KPIs and capacity models.
Our Explorer mode helps when priorities or performance gaps aren’t yet defined, surfacing hidden inefficiencies and mapping opportunities to streamline.
We design operating models that clarify accountability, decision rights and data ownership, balancing structure with flexibility. The result is an operations roadmap that people understand, leadership trusts and delivery teams can achieve.
Change Delivery
Bringing structure, visibility and pace to your project
Our Change Delivery services make complex operational transformation manageable.
We design governance that provides a single source of truth, flexible stage gates and clear escalation paths. We believe governance should be an enabler, not bureaucracy.
We build demand and resource management models that forecast capacity, prevent over-commitment and stop “hero projects” from draining performance.
We also support COOs in modelling different delivery scenarios, ensuring resources, timelines and dependencies stay in balance.
Our delivery specialists embed alongside your team to stabilise execution, remove noise and sustain momentum. When bandwidth is tight, our Resourcing for Change network provides programme managers, analysts and PMO experts who combine operational excellence with cultural fit.
Human Change
Culture and behaviour that make operations work
Operations succeed when people understand change and feel part of it.
Our Human Change practice ensures communication, leadership and culture evolve in step with process and system changes.
Using Lumina Spark, Prosci’s ADKAR® and our own Values Journeys framework, we help leaders communicate with authenticity and consistency.
We train managers to handle resistance, coach teams through change and create positive accountability that replaces burnout with ownership.
We also tackle “hero culture” directly, helping organisations move from dependency on individuals to systems and teamwork that scale. The result: a culture that delivers through collaboration, not exhaustion.
How we support your change journey
At changemaker, we take a comprehensive and holistic approach to change, offering a wide range of services across four key areas:
Change Design
Supporting you in exploring what change might look like, or navigating your way to realising the change you desire.
Change Delivery
Implementing the governance and skills to plan and deliver change in an ambiguous world.
Human Change
Supporting the human being in understanding why and how to change to realise their full potential.
What this means for you as COO
When changemaker partners with a COO, we become your operational co-pilot.
We help you bring order to competing priorities, strengthen control without bureaucracy, and keep people motivated while the business transforms.
You gain clear visibility of performance, transparent decision making and the confidence that transformation is landing at every level.
Outcomes for COOs
Working with changemaker, COOs tell us they gain:
- Clarity – unified priorities and visible performance measures across operations.
- Control – governance and demand management that enable focus, not friction.
- Capability – empowered teams and leaders driving improvement sustainably.
- Confidence – predictable delivery and data-driven decisions under pressure.
- Continuity – a stronger, more resilient organisation after change.
We help COOs deliver operational change that is efficient, transparent and human, building resilience, productivity and trust across the business.
Video resources
Watch our experts share real-world insights and proven strategies to help you strengthen your organisation’s change delivery approach.
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Frequently asked questions
Here are some common questions about how we help organisations deliver change more effectively, with the right governance and approach.
How do I manage competing demands for resources?
Establish a front-door process for change requests. We help COOs apply consistent criteria – strategic alignment, value and feasibility – to prioritise initiatives transparently and stop overload before it starts.
How do I optimise resource management?
We build capacity and demand models that let you see where people and budgets are stretched. Scenario modelling and forecasting prevents bottlenecks and reduces burnout across functions.
Why is governance often misunderstood?
Because it’s either too rigid or too vague. We design governance that clarifies ownership and decisions without slowing progress — making it a catalyst, not a constraint
How do I overcome hero culture?
Shift success from individuals to systems. We help you create shared processes, cross-train teams and reward collaboration so performance doesn’t rely on a few high performers.
How do I reduce resistance to operational change?
Resistance often comes from fear or confusion. We help you connect change to purpose, communicate with empathy and offer the right support at the right time.
How do I measure transformation success?
We combine operational and cultural metrics – throughput, efficiency, adoption and engagement – to measure not just what changed, but how people experienced it.
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