Françoise Danoy · Operations, built with aroha

Sound familiar?

Tick the ones that hurt.

Work lives in six tools and nobody fully trusts any of them.The real source of truth is whoever answers Slack fastest.
Every process lives in one person's head. Usually yours.When that person is out, the work just waits.
The team spends Monday morning figuring out what Monday is.The week really starts on Tuesday.
You bought the AI tools. They're gathering dust.Half the team is afraid to overstep, the other half is using them in ways nobody agreed to.
One person got faster with AI. The company didn't.The gains pile up in front of the same old bottleneck.
There's one automation nobody dares touch.No undo means no experimenting, so it stays fragile forever.

Two or more? That's exactly the work I do.

How I work

How do you want to feel when you open your systems?

It's the first thing I ask. Most people open their systems and feel some mix of anxious and overwhelmed. I want you to end up calm and grounded, ready to do the mahi.

However you answer that, my part starts the same way: with empathy and discovery, always. I lead with whakawhanaungatanga (relationships): I ask the personal questions, and I hold boundaries without drawing a hard line in the sand. If you show up late, or a coffee chat runs long, or life cancels a meeting, that's all fine. I'd rather you feel met than managed.

The tools are meant to serve that, not the other way around. Most of what makes a business run well isn't flashy: clear processes, systems shaped around how real brains actually work (mine included), the quiet structure that stops things slipping. I bring in a tool only when it genuinely earns its place, because every tool costs something. Sometimes that's AI taking the repetitive grind off your team. Just as often, it's something far simpler.

I do this work to clear the mental fatigue, and to make room for the good kind of friction: the creative, genuinely hard work that energises people instead of draining them.

“He aha te mea nui o te ao? Māku e kī atu, he tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.” What is the most important thing in the world? I will say: it is people, it is people, it is people.

What I do

A few ways I help, depending on where you are.

Whether you want someone to build it, stay alongside you, or teach your team to run it themselves, there's a way to work together that fits.

Kaiako

Do it yourself

You've got the drive. I'll teach you the way.

For teams who want to build their own systems and workflows but don't know where to start. I look at how you work, teach you what's worth building, and hand over the plan and tools to run it yourselves. Then I step back, because the point is your team standing on its own.

Best for capable teams who want to build the muscle in-house.

Kaiwhakahaere

Done with you

Your team builds it. I hold the structure and the standard.

Your people have the hands. I keep the whole thing moving, the cadence and the momentum, and act as your quality gate: the senior eye that catches what's off before it ships. You build the muscle. I make sure it's built right.

Best for teams with capable people who need discipline and a senior eye on the work.

Kaitiaki

Done for you

You need it handled. I'll carry it.

For when you just need it handled. I build the whole system, document it properly, and hand back something that runs. Or I stay on to hold and maintain it as a fractional part of your team.

Best for leaders who need it done well and want to trust one steady person with it.

My process

I approach your systems the way I approach anything I make by hand: patiently, and built to last. The same process every time, because it works.

Aro · Observe

Empathy and discovery first. I interview your team, map how work really flows, and find the constraint that sets the pace of everything.

Hoahoa · Design

I design around the system, starting where it matters most. Small changes first, foundations before flash.

Hanga · Make

I build the workflows and tools, with an undo for everything, and AI only where it fits.

Whakatinana · Roll out

I train your team to run it, and to judge it. Knowing when to trust AI output is the real skill.

Tiaki · Tend

Documentation, measures, and upkeep, so it holds and keeps improving after I leave.

How I think about AI

AI is a mirror.

Here's what a decade of operations work taught me, and what the research now confirms: AI amplifies whatever it lands in. Give it a team with clear processes and shared context, and it makes them faster. Give it chaos, and it makes chaos faster.

DORA's 2025 study of nearly 5,000 technology professionals found that the biggest returns from AI come from the system around it: how clear your workflows are, how healthy your data is, whether your team knows what's expected of them. The tools themselves came last.

So I start with your people and how work actually flows through them. We find the real bottleneck, fix the foundations, and bring in AI where it serves the humans behind the screens. The tools come last. That order is the whole method.

“A bad system will beat a good person every time.” — W. Edwards Deming

Free download

The 7 foundations of AI adoption that actually holds.

Before you buy a single license, there are 7 things research says decide whether AI helps your team or hurts it. I turned them into a plain-language checklist you can score your own organization against in 20 minutes.

Get the checklist (PDF)

Selected work

A look at what changed.

Real builds with the numbers attached. Clients anonymized, outcomes real.

A digital marketing agencyOperations infrastructure

The team had no shared system. Work lived in scattered docs and color-coded flags only a few people understood. I interviewed every team, built their ClickUp workspace from nothing with a clear folder structure and per-team views, replaced the flags with a status-based workflow, and set a steady Mon/Wed/Fri rhythm.

How it worked

I started with interviews, one per team lead, and mapped how work actually moved between teams. Views are scoped to each team, so nobody scrolls past work that isn't theirs, and statuses carry the handoffs, so a task moving between teams needs no meeting. The Mon/Wed/Fri rhythm gives the week a shape the whole team can see. I wrote the runbook, so it survives without me.

Result

Cross-functional visibility and a real operating cadence. For the first time, everyone could see the work.

The same agency, phase twoAI workflow build

With the operation finally running smoothly, we went after the biggest time sink: publishing. I built a 30-plus-step pipeline on Zapier and the Anthropic Claude API that takes a client's Word doc, turns it into structured content, hosts the images, logs an audit trail, and delivers a finished CMS draft, with a validation layer so nothing breaks silently.

How it worked

A writer drops a Word doc in a shared folder and the pipeline takes it from there. A validation layer checks every field before anything moves: missing alt text or a broken heading stops the run and flags a human. Every run logs an audit trail, and the finished draft arrives in the CMS ready for review. Nobody supervises it, and that was the test that mattered.

Result

30+ minutes saved on every post, running across all client accounts unsupervised.

A product companyAI triage system

Open customer claims were piling up with no single view of what was outstanding or what needed action. I built a triage system that pulls in the open claims, sorts what genuinely needs attention, and rolls it up into one clear weekly task, so nothing slips and the team starts each week knowing exactly what's on the table.

How it worked

The system pulls every open claim into one view, sorts what genuinely needs attention from what can wait, and rolls it all into one clear weekly task. The team starts each week knowing what's outstanding, and nothing slips between the cracks.

Result

A scattered backlog turned into a single, reliable weekly action list.

A communications agencyCost & systems audit

The business was paying for 30+ tools, many overlapping or unused, but cutting them felt risky. I audited the whole stack, made the case tool by tool, and earned the founder's buy-in before changing anything, so the cuts landed with zero pushback.

How it worked

The audit listed every tool with its cost, who actually touched it, and what would break if it vanished tomorrow. I took the findings to the founder first, because a cut like this dies the moment it feels imposed from the side. Every migration shipped with an undo: exports taken and data archived before anything got switched off. Nobody asked for a single tool to be reinstated.

Result

More than half the tools gone, hundreds of dollars back every month, and the team never missed a single one.

Kind words

“It would've taken a year to accomplish all that you've built in a few weeks.”

A client, on a program built from scratch

“We have complete confidence in our ability to excel, thanks to the invaluable tools, knowledge, systems, and resources that Françoise has helped us establish.”
A creative company, on the systems we built together

“Interacting with Françoise for just 30 minutes, I felt helped. I felt like I was speaking with someone who actually made the effort to learn more about me.”
A client, after one 30-minute call

“Always thinking of ways to build efficiencies and quality. We are so freaking lucky to have you here!”
Leadership at a partner agency

“Françoise was so action oriented, thoughtful, and had amazing customer service skills!”
A client, after a weekend of hands-on support

“Very impressed by your project management and comms.”
A client partner, mid-project

“Extremely clear, kind, forthright, proactive, organized… truly adds the human dimension back into the process.”
A colleague, on working with her

“Thank you for writing such a clear doc! That feels extremely helpful both for shared ownership and diverse perspectives, and for cross-training.”
A teammate, on her documentation

“Thank you for your leadership and your commitment to excellence.”
A nonprofit CEO

“A real change maker, who’s helped many people grow their own ventures responsibly and well. The field is so fortunate to have her.”
An industry peer

Open your systems and feel calm for once.

Sound familiar?

Kia ora, I'm Françoise.

How do you want to feel when you open your systems?

A few ways I help, depending on where you are.

You've got the drive. I'll teach you the way.

Your team builds it. I hold the structure and the standard.

You need it handled. I'll carry it.

Aro · Observe

Hoahoa · Design

Hanga · Make

Whakatinana · Roll out

Tiaki · Tend

AI is a mirror.

The 7 foundations of AI adoption that actually holds.

A look at what changed.

Think we might be a fit?