You don’t need another ops hire. You need to name the chaos.
Because let’s be honest: most startups aren’t failing because they lack ambition. They’re failing because the inside of the business is an ungoverned circus—and no one’s officially in charge of the tent.
I’m Victoria Lloyd, Fractional Chief of Staff and founder of Perfect Thunder. I work with founders who are high-functioning, vision-filled, and secretly spiralling under the weight of their own growth. You don’t need a full-time COO. You need a system. You need rhythm. You need to name the chaos—and dismantle it.
Here are the 3 chaos types I see again and again—and how to fix them before they quietly kill your momentum.
🍝 Spaghetti Chaos
Everything is connected. Everything is urgent. You pull one strand, five more follow. Execution feels like trying to eat spaghetti with a whisk.
Symptoms:
Ownership is a myth. Everything is "collaborative," but nothing is getting done.
New hires ask "Who does this?" every 3 hours.
Your strategy lives in Notion. Execution lives in Slack. Delivery lives nowhere.
What’s really going on:
You scaled fast but never rewired your internal systems. Your delivery engine hasn’t caught up with your growth.
The Fix:
Weekly exec cadences (yes, with real agendas)
Priority filters: what gets resourced, what gets paused
Scalable templates + project structures anyone can follow
Delegation with actual trust, not just lip service
Big Truth: If everything is owned by everyone, nothing gets done.
🚯 Firefighting Chaos
Everyone is so busy. And nothing is really getting done.
Symptoms:
Your calendar looks like a war zone
Every decision ends up on the founder’s desk
Teams feel frantic and reactive - that culture you once had? Ya, people are yearning for the 'good old days'
Diagnosis
There’s no calm command centre. No clarity of roles. No room to think. You’re solving everything in the moment instead of designing systems to prevent the problems in the first place.
What’s really going on:
You’ve created a hero culture. Everyone's solving stuff in the moment instead of building systems that prevent it.
The Fix:
Empowered pods with real ownership + autonomy
Comms audit: how many tools are you using—and are they helping?
Clear decision rights + escalation paths (so the founder can stop being the switchboard)
Big Truth: Firefighting is rarely about the fire. It’s about emotional leakage, poor ownership, and bad calendars
❄️ Frozen Chaos
There’s a strategy. It’s beautiful. It's colour-coded. It's also... completely inert.
Symptoms:
Everyone nods in meetings, then nothing happens
Everything is pending "a bit more thinking"
Polite but weirdly misaligned team dynamics
What’s really going on:
You’ve overcorrected into perfection paralysis. The team’s scared to act. Leadership is unclear. Culture is overly cautious.
The Fix:
Run short, sharp project sprints (with one clear driver)
Build imperfect action into the culture (yes, even for senior folks)
Bring back cross-team retros, team tenets, and bottom-up energy that matches the top-down strategy
Give people a day off... to build something. Together.
Big Truth: Chaos doesn’t always look messy. Sometimes it looks like a Notion graveyard full of dead initiatives and false alignment.
The Wrap-Up:
If you recognise any of these—good. That means you’re paying attention. Most founders just barrel forward.
You don’t need more tools. You need calm. Rhythm. Real leadership structure. You need someone thinking about this so you don’t have to.
That’s what I do.
I’m Victoria Lloyd—Fractional Chief of Staff & founder of Perfect Thunder. I help teams diagnose the mess, build momentum, and protect the founder’s headspace so you can get back to doing your actual job: serving customers, growing something real, and (god forbid) taking a day off.
Want a fix for your chaos flavour? Drop me a message - lets move.