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Case study / 02

Managing Director
2025 – 2026

CHAPTER 2

Ran the European business. Won €3.3M in new ARR over twelve months. Then rebuilt how Europe operated.

I ran the region, won the work and built the team. Then I redesigned the operation behind it.

P&L owned
Europe
New ARR won in twelve months
€3.3M
Recruiting programs led
4 countries
Shared-service reliance removed
3 roles

01 · The mandate

Chapter 2 needed someone to run its European business, win clients and build the operation behind the work. It also wanted to prove inside its own company how AI could improve People Ops.

02 · What I built and led

I led recruiting programs across Germany, the US, the UK and India and directly hired a Chief Product Officer.

I rebuilt EU People Ops so a Germany-based operator, supported by AI agents working within clear rules, could replace reliance on three UK shared-service roles. Repeatable work moved to agents; sensitive decisions remained with people.

The model became the reference for the group’s wider AI transformation.

How it worked

Reconstructed service workflow

Repeatable work moved to agents. Sensitive decisions stayed with people.

Agents handle the routine work and keep a record of what happened. A person steps in for exceptions, approvals and decisions that affect people.

  1. 01

    Request arrives

    A People Ops request arrives with the information needed to act on it.

    Team
  2. 02

    Agent prepares

    An agent sorts the request, gathers context and prepares the next action.

    Agent workflow
  3. 03

    Routine work runs

    The agent completes repeatable work against policy and records what it did.

    Agent workflow
  4. 04

    A person decides

    Exceptions, risk and decisions that affect people go to an accountable person.

    Human judgment
  5. 05

    The record improves

    Outcomes and exceptions improve the playbook instead of disappearing in inboxes.

    Operating system
Durable outcomeOne Germany-based operator now runs EU People Ops with agents working within clear rules, replacing reliance on three UK shared-service roles while keeping sensitive decisions with people.

03 · Tradeoffs and judgment

The choices that shaped the system.

  1. 01

    Start with repeatable work

    Agents handle work with a clear process. Decisions needing context, empathy or risk ownership stay with people.

  2. 02

    Escalate uncertainty

    The workflow makes exceptions visible and sends them to a person instead of guessing or burying them in manual work.

  3. 03

    Prove the model in Germany

    Germany became the working reference before the model informed the wider transformation.

04 · What changed

Commercial leadership and operating design in the same role: grow the business, then redesign the work behind it.

Evidence note · Metrics are drawn from the operating record for this work. The €3.3M is the combined annual recurring revenue of new business I brought to Chapter 2 over twelve months, not the company’s net ARR increase. The workflow is a confidentiality-safe reconstruction rather than a production screenshot; selected references are available privately.