Interim operations and transformation director.

Netherlands and Belgium; Germany where the working language is English or German.

For mid-sized companies — family-owned and private-equity portfolio — that need to recover in the numbers. Asset-intensive: grid operators and grid connections, industry, logistics. I take over the operation and the cost base, with line authority over people and a P&L. Afterwards it should be possible to say I ran it, not that I advised on it.

charles@tietzemanagement.nl +31 6 8277 0909 Lelystad, Netherlands

How it works

Two weeks, thirty to forty conversations.: From supervisor level up, hunting for the three constraints worth acting on. What people say is triangulated against what the systems show; the gap between the two is where the real problems live.
Every finding gets a number.: Before it reaches the board. "Quite often" is not a finding; a frequency times a cost is.
Every finding leaves with a named owner and a committed date.: Agreed with them first. The first ten presented are the cheap, fast, provable ones — they buy the trust with which the hard ones are accepted without a fight.

What it rests on

A Dutch TSO and a Belgian water utility: Multi-year transformation delivery in utilities; workstream level, commercial and delivery accountability.
BMW Group: Mandated to build a new analytics capability on SAP data from nothing: recruited the statisticians and machine-learning specialists, carried the personal risk of standing it up, and ran every proof of concept through to a working function. Later formalised and aligned with Munich under a German manager; it has since grown into multiple teams and is still running today. Key role in the direct-to-consumer implementation in South Africa, pilot market for a model since rolled out to 60+ markets.
Chairman, organisation of 30+ staff: From structural loss to a €300k surplus in one year, €1.2m reserve at handover, which has continued to grow under successive boards; steered through COVID with salary renegotiations, layoffs and creditors at the table.
BHP Billiton, four manganese mines: Every system, process, data flow and decision-maker mapped; c. R200m of systems overspend exposed. Where the method started, in 2011, and in use since.
Cover: Professional liability €2.5m per claim and per contract year, including €1.25m directors’ liability for interim management. In force from 1 October 2026.