interim leadership for creative agencies and brands in motion
CONNECT
THE DOTS
TURNING COMPLEXITY INTO CLARITY AND CLARITY INTO MOTION. WITHOUT THE FULL-TIME PRICE TAG.
GROWTH THAT HOLDS. SCALE THAT WORKS. COMPANIES BUILT TO LAST.… your company is growing fast, but the operational infrastructure hasn't kept up and you can feel where that breaks..
We get the call when
…there's untapped growth in your existing client base. More revenue, better margin, stronger relationships, by building lasting partnerships.
… there's more profit in the revenue you already have. Not from more clients or longer days, but from sharper sight on where margin leaks, where the cost base has drifted, where the work has slack.
…your client services team needs a temporary senior hand. A pitch just landed, a key person is leaving, or the right permanent hire is still in progress. The clients still need to be looked after. The work can't wait.
…you're navigating a restructure, a leadership gap, or a team that needs reshaping. You need someone senior enough to make the hard calls and steady enough to land them well.
If two or more of these feel like the room you're in right now - let's talk.Services
it starts with a call. From there, the work takes the shape it needs to take.-
For CEOs, founders and MT members of creative agencies. Mirror, challenge, pivot, cut through the noise — turning half-formed thoughts into actionable ideas, and questions you can’t take to your team into clear next moves. Honest, regular, peer-level sparring at the top of the business.
Typical engagement: 1 day a week, ongoing. Three-month minimum.
When the sparring reveals work that needs building, the partnership grows into one of three following engagements.
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For agencies that need their operations to work harder. Whether you’re growing on hustle and the systems haven’t kept up, finding more profit in the revenue you already have, or scaling capacity without scaling the cost base. The work is the same shape: ways of work, financial visibility, delivery rhythm, sharper teams, smarter tooling.
Typical engagement: 2–3 days a week, 6–9 months.
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For agencies that need experienced cover in client services — across account management, project management or both. A pitch has just been won, a key person is leaving, or the right permanent hire is still in progress. The clients still need to be looked after. The work can't wait.
Connect the Dots steps in to protect client relationships, maintain delivery standards and keep the team moving, for as long as it takes to find the right person.
Typical engagement: 3–4 days a week, 1–6 months
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For agencies opening new markets, offices, or departments where the integration is harder than the expansion. Operating model design, local leadership hiring, integrated ways of work, and the cross-office rhythm that makes one global agency feel like one business.
Typical engagement: 3 days a week, 9–12 months.
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For agencies in a moment that demands clarity and a steady hand: a merger, a restructure, a leadership gap, commercial pressure, or a team that needs reshaping. Reading the situation fast, holding the wheel, making and communicating the hard calls, and delivering the right outcome with judgement and care. For the people going, and the people staying.
Typical engagement: 2–3 days a week, 6–12 months.
About
TURN complexity into CLARITY.Connect the Dots is an Amsterdam-based fractional leadership agency founded in 2022 by Susanne, with 18+ years of agency experience across global networks, boutique studios, and the early days of influencer marketing. She started her career in client services, project delivery, and operational management across top agencies in London and Amsterdam. Over the past decade, she moved into senior leadership roles focused on leading teams through change management, scaling organisations and driving growth in fast-paced agency environments and scale-up boutique brands.
Born from that experience, Connect the Dots specialises in operational change at the moments where ambition has outpaced the organisation, or the organisation needs to catch up with the market.
Three principles shape the work
Judgement over comfort. Calling what’s right rather than what’s easy. Sometimes the right call is the uncomfortable one — restructuring a team, cutting what isn’t earning its place, or, in one case, advising a founding team to file for bankruptcy and staying to navigate it.
Build what lasts. Whatever gets built — workflows, teams, operating models — should outlast the engagement. A fractional executive who creates dependency is a bad fractional executive.
Find the gems. Recruitment is craft, not cost. The right senior hire — and the quiet rising talent already inside the agency — is often the difference between a business that scales and one that just gets bigger.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY