Fractional Operations Leadership · Phoenix, Arizona
Build the operating structure
behind the ambition.
Mountain Shadows Consulting embeds experienced operations leadership inside your business, building the structure, accountability, and systems that let you scale without sacrificing quality, culture, or customer trust.
Where we intervene
Organizations rarely fail from lack of effort. They fail from unclear systems.
Internal friction
Teams are busy, but priorities are unclear. Work is moving, but not cleanly.
Leadership overload
Owners carry too much undocumented knowledge. The business depends on their memory.
Execution inconsistency
Outcomes depend too heavily on who is involved, not on what the system produces.
Quality gaps
Field work, client experience, and internal standards aren't verified consistently.
Scaling strain
The business is growing, but accountability and documentation haven't kept pace.
Operational ambiguity
No one is quite sure where responsibility begins, ends, or how decisions are tracked.
Free 2-minute diagnostic
Find the root cause under the chaos.
Ten quick questions pinpoint which of five root causes is really driving your team's friction, ownership, accountability, the emotional layer, process, or leadership, plus the one move to make this week.
What's actually going on here?
Answer 10 quick questions about your team or organization. This identifies the root cause underneath the dysfunction you're feeling, not just another to-do list.
Services
Strategic leadership, practical enough for the field.
Executive-level operational leadership without a full-time hire. Cadence, workflow design, accountability tracking, and execution follow-through.
A structured review of how the business actually functions: people, process, tools, communication, decision flow, and risk points.
For companies relying too heavily on memory or individual heroics. SOPs, checklists, role-clarity documents, and quality standards.
Built for construction, service, and project-based organizations. Site coordination, inspection readiness, and quality verification.
Ownership matrices, decision logs, performance rhythms, and escalation protocols. Structure turns accountability into leadership.
"Operations are not administrative.
Operations are economic protection."
Engagement models
Operational discipline, without the cost of a full-time executive.
Embedded Operations Leader
Up to 16 hrs/week, including onsite presence on a set schedule. I act as your operations leader, running accountability rhythms, managing priorities, and installing systems while working directly with your team. Weekly written status report; monthly review with ownership. 3-month minimum.
Operations Advisory & Systems Build
Up to 10 hrs/week, remote. Process documentation, SOPs, accountability frameworks, org-structure design, and operational audits. Async access for decisions, bi-weekly working sessions, monthly progress review. 3-month minimum.
Defined-scope projects (operational audits, process documentation packages, expansion readiness assessments) are quoted individually by Statement of Work. Typical range: $2,500–$7,500. Engagements are flexible, scoped to your actual needs.
Core principles
Wisdom-led operations for serious builders.
Clarity before action
Execution begins with a clear understanding of priorities, responsibilities, and desired outcomes.
Accountability with integrity
Sustainable organizations create accountability through transparency, ownership, and follow-through.
Structure creates freedom
Well-designed systems reduce friction and let teams focus on objective execution.
Excellence is intentional
Consistent results come from disciplined process and thoughtful leadership, rarely by accident.
Long-term thinking
Growth is built through deliberate decisions that strengthen the organization over time.
People over optics
The system has to work for the humans running it, or it doesn't work at all.
The founder
Codi's path into operations leadership started in the field: demolition crews, fire suppression inspections, and the unglamorous parts of construction that most people skip past on their way to a corner office. That ground-level start became a foundation, not a detour. Codi moved from field labor into project coordination, then into safety and code compliance, and eventually into directing multimillion-dollar commercial builds; the kind of progression that happens because you prove you can carry more weight project after project.
As a teen, Codi helped a local construction owner grow the business from small residential remodels into large-scale commercial and ground-up construction, taking on tenant improvements, luxury remodels, and specialty hospitality projects between $2M–$10M across the Phoenix and Scottsdale markets, including the commercial renovation of the US Airways Center, now Footprint Center, where the Phoenix Suns still play. That trajectory continued into roles oscillating between inspections and technician, Project Coordinator and Commercial Superintendent. In these roles, she developed as a leader, gaining a deeper understanding of code compliance, client experience, and business management. Whether she is working for herself and supporting business owners here in the Valley and on the East Coast, or overseeing projects and developing people and systems, she defends individual project responsibility, quality control, and ethical practices as core principles in fast-moving field conditions.
That range extends well past construction. Codi held a role in the Mayo Clinic's administration and intake coordination under strict federal and state compliance standards, supported back-office operations for an East Coast spec-home builder, and has worked hands-on with various entrepreneurs across the Valley, training longtime teams on new technology, building structure for founders, and partnering with larger organizations on enterprise-wide rollouts. A theme runs through all of it: Codi is the person called in when a project or a company is under immense load, financially, operationally, or otherwise, and needs someone who can both stabilize it and lead the people inside it. Sometimes that's clarifying and validating an owner's next move. Sometimes it's running point on the ground, keeping fires out and systems moving, while keeping a team's focus and morale intact under pressure.
As self-sufficiency required it, Codi learned to build a workable plan from what was on hand while rebuilding a life from the ground up. That instinct, for finding order and developing a plan inside real pressure, is the foundation Mountain Shadows Consulting is built on.
Codi loves this work: finding practical, and sometimes unconventional, methods to bring structure to businesses that need it, helping the people inside them refocus on what matters without losing morale along the way. The vision behind Mountain Shadows Consulting reaches beyond any single client engagement, toward a future where radical accountability and ethical practice are the standard the next generation inherits, not the exception in business.
"You don't always get to choose the hand you're dealt. You can choose how well you play it."
How engagements work
Discovery call
No charge. We assess fit, pressure points, and what success actually looks like.
Operations assessment
The first two weeks. I learn your business before changing it: people, processes, numbers, risks.
Stabilize & build
We fix what's bleeding first, then install the systems that prevent recurrence.
Transfer ownership
Everything I build is documented and handed to your team. My goal is to make myself progressively less necessary.
Common questions
What working together looks like.
What is fractional operations leadership?
An experienced operations leader embedded inside your business part-time, running accountability, priorities, and systems, without the cost of a full-time executive. You get senior operational horsepower scaled to what you actually need.
Who does Mountain Shadows Consulting work with?
Founder-led and family businesses, growth-stage SMBs, construction and trades, service businesses, and owners or leadership teams who want a confidante, not a slide deck. It's a strong fit for companies feeling the strain of their own growth.
What areas do you serve?
The Phoenix, Arizona metro, including Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Surprise, with onsite presence available locally and advisory engagements delivered remotely nationwide.
How much does it cost?
Embedded Operations Leader is $5,500 per month (up to 16 hours per week, onsite, 3-month minimum). Operations Advisory & Systems Build is $3,000 per month (up to 10 hours per week, remote). Defined-scope projects are quoted individually, typically $2,500 to $7,500.
How do engagements start?
With a no-charge discovery call to assess fit and pressure points, then a two-week operations assessment. From there we stabilize what's bleeding and build the systems that prevent it from recurring, documenting everything and handing it to your team.
What makes Mountain Shadows different?
Most operations fixes fail at the people layer, not the whiteboard. Alongside the workflows and accountability systems, Codi builds the leadership habits and emotional intelligence that make the systems actually stick when she's not in the room.
Start with a conversation
Clarity. Structure. Accountability. Built to last.
A focused, no-charge conversation to assess fit, surface your real pressure points, and define what success looks like.
Schedule a reviewGet in touch
Schedule a Strategic Operations Review.
Tell me a little about the business and I'll be in touch personally, usually within one business day.
- Call(480) 978-4360
- Email[email protected]