The Refracted Aspect Operations Health Check
15 Questions Every Operations Team Needs To Answer
The business is moving, but the machine doesn’t feel steady. Execution is inconsistent. Hand-offs get messy, work stalls without warning, and if you’re not in the room, progress slows or stops entirely.
This diagnostic gives you 15 targeted questions. Not to score your team, but to spot breakdowns, highlight where ownership is slipping, and pinpoint the gaps that quietly drag down performance.
It’s built for business leaders who want clarity, so they can lead with confidence and take back strategic control.
You won’t get a number at the end. But you’ll walk away knowing what’s running well, what’s overloaded, and what’s holding your operations back — whether you can see it today or not.
About This Health Check
We built this Operations Health Check from direct experience leading, building, and fixing business functions, combined with independent market research and academic resources that explore what holds businesses back and what helps them move forward.
Each question is designed to help you look beyond the obvious and uncover the real causes — the structural issues, trade-offs, and gaps that often go unnoticed or unaddressed. We identified the top recurring problems, along with the patterns that often go overlooked, normalized, or explained away.
Who It’s For
This Health Check is designed for individuals responsible for overseeing the business’s operations, specifically, the systems, hand-offs, and processes that ensure smooth workflow.
You might:
- Spend more time putting out fires than improving how things work
- See gaps between what’s planned and what actually gets done
- Depend on workarounds or team memory to keep things running
- Fix the same problems more than once — or find they’re not being fixed at all
- Wonder where the bottlenecks are, but don’t have the data to prove it
Who It’s For
This Health Check is designed for individuals responsible for overseeing the business’s operations, specifically, the systems, hand-offs, and processes that ensure smooth workflow.
You might:
- Spend more time putting out fires than improving how things work
- See gaps between what’s planned and what actually gets done
- Depend on workarounds or team memory to keep things running
- Fix the same problems more than once — or find they’re not being fixed at all
- Wonder where the bottlenecks are, but don’t have the data to prove it
Get The Operations Health Check
We ask one quick question before sending the Operations Health Check. It helps us understand what you’re looking for, and gives you a chance to pause and focus before diving in.
How To Use It
This Operations Health Check works best when you bring focus, honesty, and a willingness to pause the day-to-day and look at how the business really operates.
These aren’t passive prompts. They’re designed to challenge how you think about the work — how your processes, decisions, and accountabilities play out in practice. You’ll get more from them if you’re willing to be honest with yourself and open to what you might find.
Set aside time, block it out, and treat it like the deep work it is. Whether you go through it solo or with your team, give it your full attention as it’s too important to rush.
How To Use It
This Operations Health Check works best when you bring focus, honesty, and a willingness to pause the day-to-day and look at how the business really operates.
These aren’t passive prompts. They’re designed to challenge how you think about the work — how your processes, decisions, and accountabilities play out in practice. You’ll get more from them if you’re willing to be honest with yourself and open to what you might find.
Set aside time, block it out, and treat it like the deep work it is. Whether you go through it solo or with your team, give it your full attention as it’s too important to rush.
What Happens Next
In about a week, we’ll follow up via email to ask whether the Operations Health Check was useful.
If it raised anything you want to explore further, you’ll have the option to book a 45-minute discovery call. There’s no obligation, just a chance to dig into the results and make sense of what they’re telling you.
We’re ready to talk if you are.
Who We Are
We see the world through different lenses, and that’s our superpower. Our varied experiences and perspectives push us to consider challenges from every angle. We question, test, and refine ideas together, always arriving at stronger solutions than either of us could alone.
Ewan is the CEO and co-founder of Refracted Aspect Collective. With deep experience in strategic sales, marketing, leadership, and operations — and a background that spans special forces, business coaching, and consulting — he thrives on solving complex problems and guiding teams to clarity and action.
He helps businesses trade chaos for control through a fractional C-suite that ends guesswork and grind. With data-driven strategy and straight-up leadership, he brings clarity, momentum, and practical execution to the parts of the business that matter most.
Ewan has built and sold businesses, advised high-growth companies, and partnered with clients across a wide range of industries — Whether navigating complexity or leading turnarounds, he’s been inside businesses just like yours — aligning leadership, fixing operations, and building companies that actually work.
He brings real-world execution backed by academic rigour, holding an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, and a Master’s in Criminology & Criminal Justice. Ewan has run point on special operations teams, closed multi-million dollar deals, and helped businesses grow by over 600% year-on-year.
What he does best:
• Fractional leadership (CMO / CRO / COO) with strategic oversight and hands-on execution
• Growth strategy that aligns marketing, sales, and operations around clear priorities
• Business consulting that diagnoses fast, fixes what matters, and builds lasting systems
• Coaching that builds confident leaders through clarity, accountability, and emotional intelligence
• SEO, content, and web strategy that drive visibility, leads, and long-term growth
Melissa is the COO and co-founder of Refracted Aspect Collective. She is a calm, analytical, and results-driven consultant with a background in engineering, finance, and operations. She brings structure to complexity, clarity to chaos, and balance to teams under pressure. With a natural eye for detail and a pragmatic mindset, she thrives in environments where financial and operational alignment is critical.
She has led major projects across North America and Australia in industries including IT, banking and finance, real estate, mining, transport, and manufacturing. Known for her ability to stabilise and streamline, she’s often brought in to underperforming projects, distressed businesses, or misaligned teams — particularly where internal friction is impacting delivery and client outcomes.
She once helped steer a business away from collapse by restoring operational and financial control in just six weeks.
Melissa has studied Mechanical Engineering and holds a Diploma in Business Management, along with a Certified Project Officer (CPO) credential. She also brings formal education in accounting, data analytics, and sustainability.
What she does best:
• Financial and operational strategy that delivers clarity, structure, and control
• Hands-on troubleshooting of workflows, systems, and team structures to resolve root-cause issues
• Project management that turns complex plans into achievable actions
• Systems implementation that reduces friction and supports sustainable growth