Zero Fog
Selected work · 06 of 09

From a 16-person incubator to a 150+ person global practice.

The Situation: A global strategy consulting firm had incubated a customer journey and experience digitization program inside its digital initiative: 16 people, strong early client results, and depth from work with a leading research university. Leadership wanted to know whether it could become a firmwide practice, and what had to be true for it to scale without diluting the quality that made it work.
The Constraint We Identified

Growth looked like a demand problem. It was an operating-model problem.

The natural read was to win more programs and hire behind them. Demand was there. But delivery quality depended on a handful of people, and nothing about the offer, the delivery model or the go-to-market was packaged. Every new program started close to scratch.

The research partnership gave the work its depth, but it wasn't built into the offer, so it didn't travel with the practice as it grew. Scaling headcount on that base would have scaled the variance, not the results.

What We Built

A packaged offer and delivery model, with teams scaled behind what was proven.

Structural pattern Growth model
SCALE BEHIND PROVEN OFFERINGS, NOT AHEAD OF THEM16Incubator150+Global practicePeople in the practice, in under three yearsWHAT HAD TO BE TRUEPackaged offerDelivery modelSector GTMGlobal teamingQuarterly releasesRESULT · 10× REVENUE IN UNDER TWO YEARS · FORRESTER WAVE LEADER 2022, 2023
The structural pattern. Each step up in size came after the offer, the delivery model and the sector go-to-market for that step were proven, not before. The quarterly release cycle kept the offer current as the practice grew.
  • MapWe mapped how programs were actually sold, staffed and delivered across the early engagements, and where results depended on specific people rather than on the model.
  • AssessThe constraint was packaging: offer, delivery and teaming weren't codified, so growth would have multiplied inconsistency.
  • DecidePackage the offer and the delivery model, stand up a go-to-market model by sector, and scale teams behind proven offerings rather than ahead of them.
  • ExecuteRan the program as COO: secured budgets, targeted the go-to-market, teamed practice areas globally, and ran quarterly release cycles on the offer. Practice leaders owned the client relationships.
What the Engagement Produced

A practice, not a program.

16 → 150+
People
From incubator to a global organization in about two and a half years.
10×
Revenue
In under two years. Multiple drivers contributed; the operating model made the growth repeatable.
Leader
Forrester Wave
2022 and 2023. The go-to-market model also earned an internal award.

The headcount and revenue figures describe the practice as a whole, which many people built. The program's contribution was the operating model underneath: what made each step of growth repeatable instead of heroic.

What carried forward into Zero Fog's work today

Scaling behind proof rather than ahead of it. Every recommendation now carries the evidence that the step before it worked.

Facing a similar decision?

Zero Fog Advisory Group · quarterly execution cycles · founder-led

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More selected work
02 · Post-acquisition operating model

Two operating models, one synergy thesis — and a fog condition between them.
03 · Institutional sales & research

The right idea, to the right desk, at the right moment.
05 · Capability architecture · provenance

Where the operating discipline was first practiced at scale.