I run programs where the deadline isn't negotiable.
And fix them when they slip.
I work inside the program, not alongside it. You get me, not a team.
John Tillery · Fractional Program Executive
Daimler Trucks North America
2014–2016
ABB
2016–2020
Hitachi Energy
2020–present
12 years in regulated delivery, across three employers, with no gaps.
Two ways this starts
One practice, two entry points.
Same work, same person, different moment in your year.
Fix it
It is already off track.
Most of this work starts here. The first ten days are diagnosis, not delivery, and sometimes the honest answer is that the plan has to change rather than the team. I embed with your team, work in your tools, and stay until the work ships.
Run it
The date is set and you want it delivered.
You have a program with a deadline someone outside your organization owns, and you want it run by someone who has done it before. I take the program rather than an advisory seat, and I set up the governance and operating rhythm at the front rather than inheriting whatever is there.
How it is structured
Either entry point runs embedded, at 10 to 20 hours a week for a typical three to six months, or as a retained advisory at 5 to 10 hours a month. Which one depends on how much of the delivery is mine to carry.
How both end
With the capability still in the building. I train your team on the operating rhythm as we go, so what I set up survives me leaving. That is the exit condition on every engagement, not a separate thing to buy.
I limit active engagements to 2–3 at a time, so every client gets principal-level attention.
Is this you?
Four sentences I hear on first calls.
If you have said one of these to yourself this quarter, you are the person I do this for.
“We have a date we cannot miss and I'm not confident.”
“Something's wrong and I can't tell what.”
“I know we're late. I don't know how to say it.”
“We're under an order and the remediation program is slipping.”
One is enough. None of these gets better by waiting, and the earliest of them is the cheapest to act on.
Book a 30-minute callThe pattern
The pattern travels. That is the specialty.
A pharmaceutical submission window, a bank's consent order remediation, a grid operator's compliance deadline. Different regulators, same structure: one corner is welded shut by an outside authority, and everything downstream has to be rethought around it.
I learned this in power-grid R&D and heavy-vehicle compliance, where a missed standard means a failed type test and a blocked shipment rather than a disappointing quarter. What transfers is not domain knowledge. It is knowing what breaks when the date stops being negotiable, and in what order.
Founding Engagements
Ordinate is new. Here's how I take that risk off your desk.
I launched Ordinate in 2026, so there is no client list to show you and I'm not going to manufacture one. What I can do is make the first engagement small, bounded, and cheap to walk away from.
Founding-client terms
My first three engagements run at a reduced rate. In exchange, I ask for a reference I can cite by name once the work has shipped. You get senior delivery below market; I get a track record that isn't a composite.
A two-week diagnostic, fixed fee
Start bounded. Two weeks, a fixed price agreed up front, and a written assessment at the end: root causes, a re-baselined plan, and a straight go/no-go on whether I'm the right help. If you stop there, the document is yours to keep.
A record you can check
The company is new. The delivery experience behind it is 12 years old and entirely public: named employers, named standards body, dates that match. Look it up before we talk.
Engagement Targets
What I sign up for.
Ordinate launched in 2026 and has no published client outcomes yet. Rather than invent some, here are the targets I take responsibility for before the work starts.
Life sciences
A submission window that will not move
A filing date set by the regulator, with the evidence package still being assembled across three sites and no single view of what is missing
10 days
to a written answer on whether the date is still real
One
re-baseline, with the evidence behind it
My commitment
If the date cannot be made I will say so in writing, early, while there is still time to do something about it. That is the whole job.
Healthcare technology
Integration on the regulator's clock
A merger cleared subject to conditions, with integration and divestiture dates the combined board does not get to move
100%
of integration milestones with a named owner
Weekly
decision log both legacy sides can see
My commitment
I embed with both legacy organizations and share accountability for the milestone dates, rather than reporting on them from the outside.
Financial services
Remediation nobody can evidence
A remediation program running against a consent order, where the work may be getting done but nothing produces the evidence an examiner will ask for
Zero
unflagged slips on critical-path dates
Every
decision traceable to who made it and when
My commitment
Every critical-path date gets an owner and a weekly, quantified risk position. Nothing slips quietly on my watch.
I keep a short list of outside research that matches what I see inside stalled programs. None of it is mine yet.
What I'm readingAbout
Why I do this work
I've spent 12 years delivering in regulated industries. I started in test and compliance engineering at Daimler Trucks North America, spent four years on power transformers at ABB, and today I'm an R&D Program Leader at Hitachi Energy, where I run multinational grid programs. Since 2022 I've served on IEC TC 14, the international committee that writes the power transformer standards. All of that is public and checkable; the LinkedIn link below is the record.
That work is unglamorous and unforgiving. A missed standard doesn't produce a difficult conversation; it produces a failed type test and a shipment that cannot leave. It taught me the thing I now sell: how to hold a complex program to dates when the constraints are real.
I founded Ordinate in 2026 because I kept meeting the same execution failures in organizations well outside my own industry. The gap between strategy and delivery isn't a resource problem. It's a model problem: the people who design the strategy aren't accountable for making it work.
Through Ordinate, I take on a small number of fractional leadership engagements. I'm selective because my capacity is limited and because every client deserves full attention. If we work together, you get me. Not a junior associate, not a subcontractor.
Based in Holly Springs, NC · Founder & Principal, Ordinate Consulting
Verify this on LinkedIn
Let's fix your program.
Most engagements start with a 30-minute conversation. No pitch, no obligation. If you would rather not open with a call, the diagnostic takes two minutes and you see your score before I ask you for anything.
Or email me directly at hello@ordinate.consulting