Tell us about yourself and your background
I’m Clémence Bareth, and most people call me Clem, a French fractional COO based in Doha. The role is still new in this region, and explaining it has become my favourite conversation.
How I got here is less usual. My career started in international banks, with UBS and BNY Mellon, between Europe and the GCC, managing ultra-high-net-worth clients, sovereign wealth funds and central banks. Then I stepped away during my maternity leave and set up an organic winery and olive farm on uncultivated land in southern Tuscany, with my husband’s family. It is still running today, and it was my first time as an operator with our own money on the line.
Doha came next, with a last corporate chapter at HSBC Qatar, where things clicked: I wanted to build my own company and work directly with founders. So in early 2026 I founded CB Consulting, under the Qatar Financial Centre.
We hear more and more about fractional work, yet it is still not something everybody understands. Tell us a bit more: what exactly is a fractional COO?
That’s an excellent question, and one I’m always happy to answer.
I come in when a founder has reached a certain level of maturity. A team of two to twenty people, proven offers, good revenue, strong margin. The business is healthy. And precisely because it works, the founder faces a new kind of dilemma. Maybe they are looking for the next stage of growth, and the business model has to adapt to carry it. Maybe the market is changing, and the business has to pivot. And very often the business is still founder-dependent: they hired well, they delegated the tasks, and somehow most decisions still come back to them.
In all three cases, the real issue is the same: the business has grown faster than the way it is run.
Fixing that is a COO’s job. And it is a much bigger job than people imagine, because “operations” makes everyone picture someone running the back office. What I actually look at is the vision, the strategy, the team dynamics, the systems, the numbers, the tech, how things get executed, and where the growth will come from. The whole machine, and whether it can carry where the founder wants to go.
Founders sometimes ask me why the COO should come before a Finance or HR director. Because at this size, the business does not justify a full-fledged Finance or HR function yet. What it needs first is systemization: that is what breaks the ceiling on growth. Once the business grows further, creating the other big functions becomes important. Not before.
Now, why fractional? Because at this size, this is not a five-day-a-week job. Hiring a full-time COO means buying more of the role than the business needs. A fractional COO gives you the same seniority, for the days the work actually takes, and the model typically costs 60 to 70 percent less than a full-time executive seat.
One last thing: this is not only for visionary founders who dislike operational details. Some of the CEOs I meet are very structured and process-minded themselves. They are just too deep inside their own business to see the whole picture. That is what a fractional COO brings above everything: a sparring partner at the top of the company, with external eyes.
What made you start CB Consulting, and why Qatar?
I’ve been close to a few founders, both in Europe and the GCC, over the past years. The same story kept coming back: the company had grown, the team was in place, revenue was coming in, and still the founder was carrying the whole machine alone. That costs them the freedom they had envisioned when they became founders, and it puts a ceiling on how far the company can grow. And it was hard for them to find someone senior enough at their side, someone who fit what they actually needed. That is the gap I noticed, and the one I am trying to fill with my company.
The role also fits who I am. A COO is a generalist, and I am one through and through, curious about everything from finance and marketing to leadership and AI. And whether it was a Swiss bank or a Tuscan farm, the pattern has always been the same: give me a messy operation, and I will find the structure in it.
And Qatar is my home, so it was the obvious choice
I chose the Qatar Financial Centre, an authority I highly respect: structured, and genuinely attractive for founders right now. I want to be inside the Qatari ecosystem, close to the founders I serve, at the same tables.
How do you work with your clients?
The first thing to know: every engagement is tailor-made. I work on a retainer, but the scope, the days, the priorities, everything is shaped around that client. Nothing is standardized.
What is very structured is how I approach it. I always start with an in-depth Operating Review: four to six weeks, depending on how many days I spend inside the business, to really see and understand how it runs. For founders it works like a projector on their own company. One client even told me, after going through the findings of her own review: “I’ve never seen my business so clearly.”
Once the Operating Review is done, we start with a clear plan and settle into an embedded rhythm: a point with the CEO every week, a strategic afternoon every quarter to lift our heads and redirect, clear goals and clear KPIs in between. Everything lands on a personal client portal the founder can follow almost live. And the work happens where it serves the client best: some founders want me physically in their office, others prefer remote with days on site when it matters. We agree the rhythm together, and we adapt it as the business moves.
The part clients value most is the sparring. Running a company is lonely, and every key decision ends with the founder. My clients can interrogate me on anything. I put myself in their shoes and I dedicate my brain to their business, and they know they will always get my honest read. I come with my doctor’s binoculars: a proper diagnosis, then concrete solutions and actionable timelines. And I execute with the CEO. When the team needs a manager, I take that on too.
How do you assess operational gaps when you enter a new business?
I look at the business from three different angles.
First, the founder: one-to-one sessions across the whole business
Then the team: questionnaires and real conversations where I go deeper, because the psychology of a team tells you things an org chart never will. Whether the culture the CEO hopes for is a culture the team actually feels. And then my own observation: several weeks watching how the work really gets done, as a neutral.
Very often, the picture the founder has, the picture the team has, and what I observe are three different things. Making sense of those differences is where my diagnosis comes from: the company as it is described, as it is experienced, and as it actually runs. I have not seen many operators in this market go to that depth, and it is my biggest differentiator.
The founder walks away with a full assessment of their company, read through the nine dimensions of my methodology, and a clear plan: the next quarter in detail, and the direction for the year. What works, what leaks, what is missing, and what to fix first, with an owner and a deadline on every line.
You mentioned nine dimensions. Tell us a bit more about your methodology: what does it cover?
For me, a business is like an ecosystem, made of nine dimensions: Identity, Strategy, People, Systems, Execution, Delivery, Numbers, Leadership, AI. Experience taught me that problems rarely sit where the founder thinks they are: the symptom shows in one dimension, and the cause hides in another. A classic example: a founder is convinced someone on the team is not the right fit. I look closer, and the person is perfectly capable. They were simply never set up to succeed: no clear role, no real ownership, no guidance.
The methodology stands on two things: strong, proven frameworks, and more than forty years of combined operating experience with my partner Teresa, a fractional COO based in Milan, all adapted for businesses at this exact stage.
How do you approach AI with the founders you work with?
Everyone talks about AI. Let me tell you what I actually see on the ground. When I walk into an SME today, AI is already there, but mostly as a chatbot only. Someone drafts emails with it, someone summarises documents. It helps here and there, and it stops there: nothing embedded in the operating model, which is where the real value sits. Most SMEs touch maybe ten or twenty percent of what AI could do for them.
I don’t blame founders for it, because everything around them makes it hard
A new model comes out every month, the noise on social media never stops, governance is a massive question, and regulation is being written as we speak. Large companies have consultants, internal teams and solutions built for their size. SMEs get advisors who are starting to appear, not all of whom can be trusted, and serious support at too high a cost. It is a bit of a wild west out there.
When founders ask me where to start, my answer is always the same: let’s sit down and do an assessment of where the business actually stands. My conviction: if you are serious about AI, you have to accept a change of operating model, and that change starts with a phase of systemization. AI multiplies whatever you point it at: a clean process gets faster, and a mess just becomes a faster mess. And the people matter just as much: whatever capacity AI frees up, I suggest reallocating rather than cutting jobs. A strong team, a good culture, and AI raising their output, that is a multiplier. I truly believe this is how companies will scale from now on.
You are pursuing your own AI-native business model. What does that mean in practice?
It means I am building my company the way I tell clients theirs could run. It started with the boring step: writing my workflows down before any AI touched them. Then everything CB Consulting knows went into a second brain: my methodology, my workflows, every project, every decision. It is independent of any single AI model, so I am never locked in. On top of it, AI agents sit inside my daily workflow, and my clients follow my work on a delivery platform I built myself.
The result is speed
Analysis, preparation and follow-through move much faster than one person should be able to move. But let me be clear: the thinking is mine. Every diagnosis, every recommendation, everything that reaches a client comes from my judgment and my experience. AI accelerates the preparation, it never replaces the judgment.
When I tell a founder the operating model has to change, it is because I am putting my own through it, every day.
What operational challenges do you see most often in founder-led companies?
Honestly, I keep seeing the same three.
Dependence: on the founder, who is still inside every decision, and on individuals who hold the company’s knowledge in their heads. Systemization done by feel: founders either fear that structure will make the company rigid, or they cannot see where to start because of the mess behind it, so it never starts. And now AI: I hear the same questions every week. Where do I start? Am I late? Do I have to rethink my whole tech?
All three have the same root: the company kept growing while the way it is run stayed the same. That is fixable, and it is exactly the work I do.
How do you qualify the companies you choose to work with?
The industry matters less to me, I adapt easily. What really matters is elsewhere: a proven business model, strong revenue usually past one million dollars, a full-time team in place, usually between two and twenty people, and a founder who feels the ceiling and is ready to have a sparring partner.
That last one counts more than all the others, because this is a close working relationship, built on trust. Someone who wants a true number two, external eyes, and a straight answer will get exactly that. And when it is not a fit, I say so on the first call, and I point people to someone better suited.
What’s next for CB Consulting?
More Qatar first. I want to keep building my name in this market and be at the table with founders.
Then the wider GCC and Europe. I would be eager to work with more businesses in Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Italy, markets I know particularly well and where I speak the language.
And funds
When Venture Capital or Private Equity assesses an investment or an acquisition, my Operating Review can be a strong added value next to their financial assessment: it tells them where the business really stands operationally. I spent my banking years serving institutional investors, so I do speak that language. Over time, that is where I want to take the business, and grow the team around it. Maybe this interview will open some of those doors, who knows.
Where can readers find out more?
Visit my website: clemencebareth.com
The best way to find out is a conversation. Write to me at [email protected], and we take it from there: a coffee in Doha, or a call from wherever you are, across the GCC, Europe and the UK. If you recognised your business somewhere in this interview, that conversation is worth thirty minutes of your time.
