About Sjoerd
I don't solve your problems. I make sure your team solves them.
Not an interim who takes over the baton. Someone who makes sure your business runs without you.
I've spent fifteen years in operations, across very different worlds: shipbuilding, Coolblue, FMCG, logistics, e-commerce. I kept running into the same thing: businesses grow faster than their structure can handle. That's what I help with now, mostly at scale-ups, so that one day a business can run without its owner.
Before that I played basketball at professional level. Not an obvious path to this work, but for me it was always about the same thing: not working harder, but finding the fastest and best route to the goal.
As a fractional COO I don't take over operations. I build the foundation underneath: the structures, the rhythm, the agreements, so your people carry it themselves, with real ownership. And so it keeps running when I'm gone.
- 15+ years operational experience
- Scale-ups from €3M to €50M guided
- Background in professional basketball, mechanical engineering and Lean, but above all a process thinker
What matters to me
Back to value.
Most businesses accumulate ballast along the way: work that just happened, things added on the side, habits nobody questions anymore. I help them back to the core: the value they actually deliver to their client. The rest turns out to be needed less and less. Grow that value and you can scale. Keep doing everything else alongside it and things stall.
Professional role
Fractional COO and Integrator.
I work at the intersection of strategy and execution. I help founders and their teams translate growth ambition into a business that actually runs: less dependent on the founder, more self-directing. In practice that means sharpening priorities (Rocks), setting up KPIs and scorecards, clarifying roles and decision rights, building a fixed rhythm, and cutting work that adds no value.
No hourly billing. It's about what it delivers, not the hours I put in. No advice report that ends up in a drawer. I build until it works, then I step out.
Background
From the court to the shop floor.
I played professional basketball, but chose consciously around eighteen to put my head above my body. A professional career wouldn't hold up physically in the long run, so I took a different path. What took me furthest on the court I still carry every day: not working harder, but smarter. Finding the fastest and best route to the goal, and cutting out the rest.
- MSc Production Engineering and Logistics · TU Delft
- Erasmus Exchange · KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
- BSc Mechanical Engineering · TU Delft
- Lean Black Belt · Liker Lean Academy
Beyond work
Father, first.
Married to Marja, father of two young sons. Fatherhood isn't a footnote. It shapes how I think about leadership, responsibility and long-term impact. I'm currently writing The CEO Parent, a book that uses parenting as a lens for leadership. The same conviction underpins everything I do with companies: good guidance makes people independent, not dependent.
Get started
Ready to make your business run?
Book a no-obligation call. 30 minutes. No sales pitch.
Or email directly: sjoerd@thevaluearchitects.nl