The SR-71 Blackbird had almost no defence, no missiles, minimal armour. Its only trick was acceleration. Over three thousand surface-to-air missiles were fired at it across its operational life. None hit. When a launch was detected, the standard evasive manoeuvre wasn't to dodge, it was to accelerate and outrun the missile entirely.
SilverChef's competitors move fast, that's the one edge I'd concede them today. Closing that gap is the job.
I'm positioned to close it in a way most hires aren't, because I know your customers from the inside. As a dealer, I feel the friction points SilverChef doesn't always see, not from a deck, from the daily grind of actually being one.
"The Skunkworks is a concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance, and at a fraction of the cost, of other groups in the industry, by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible."
You've already seen a focused example of this through the work with Matt, real value, delivered fast. Between the three of us, we can do a lot more, faster.
I'll roll up my sleeves in the parts of the business facing the most prickly problems, usually the teams most buried in BAU, with little room left to progress the initiatives that would actually change the status quo. I've done this before: bridging gaps between silos, taking someone else's proof of concept, and working with tech and ops to bring it properly into the business.
This is a suggestion of what's possible, one example of how far the thinking behind these ideas can go. The improvements I'm proposing elsewhere in this doc are deliberately incremental and executable. This one is aspirational and audacious, even if it's a later-phase conversation once the systems migration is done.
The core systems migration creates an opening, a native, proprietary AI trained on SilverChef's own data, strategy, performance, customer history, surfaced back to the people who need it, when they need it.
A standing check on any major decision: does this move us closer to, or further from, the FY27 goals? Anyone working through a problem can ask it directly and get an answer grounded in the strategy and the performance behind it, rather than a gut read. Over time it becomes the memory of why decisions were made, so the reasoning outlasts the people who were in the room.
Before a KAM walks into a dealer meeting, the assistant has already assembled: recent performance, notes from the last discussion, a plan to improve engagement, and the deals currently in flight. Reps walk in looking like the expert on that specific business, because they are, in under five minutes of prep instead of an hour.
A standing sweep across every active policy to flag conflicting, contradictory, or overreactions for human review, surfacing what's no longer fit for purpose instead of waiting for it to be found the long way.
You've set the FY27 goals. The destination is clear.
Execution is the open question, who owns making sure we move toward those goals day to day, and who makes sure every department is pulling in the same direction? Right now, that's nobody's job specifically, it's everybody's job a little, which in practice can mean it's nobody's.
I've found a niche for the toughest problems in a business, the ones with no obvious owner and no clear answer yet. I take them on hands-on, until they're solved or clear enough to hand to the right business unit to run with. I go this deep because, by definition, these are the problems nobody else has the capacity, bandwidth or context to untangle yet.
Our last conversation had me looking back at some of what I did the first time around, cure rates, COVID arrears management, credit submissions, Project Whitehorse, contract duration and ROI by SKU. Problems people said couldn't be solved. I solved them, not because I'm special, but because I spent more time with each one than anyone else was willing to.
That's been status quo for me since SilverChef. The difference now is I'm sharper than I was last time I worked there. Getting a shot to bring what I've learned since back to SilverChef isn't something I take lightly.
Stepping back from the detail a simple story emerges: since we last spoke I've spent a lot of time thinking. I didn't want to leave it at an exciting dinner conversation.
I took the time to put some serious thought into how I can help you and the team maximise what makes SilverChef a brilliant business. What I have put together is just one version of how I could hit the ground running. As always we can further refine the specifics in due time.
What stuck out to me after putting this together. Rarely do people get the opportunity to return to complete unfinished business. The prospect of doing so excites me to no end.
What I'm asking for is to come home and finish what we started.
Dallas: Head of Strategy & Special Projects, reporting to the CEO.