"My first job was getting people who didn't report to each other working a single objective. I've been doing it ever since."
Before supply chain, I was a Marine Corps Naval Aviator and an airborne Forward Air Controller, with combat missions in Desert Storm. A FAC directs coordinated action across platforms that share no chain of command: fighters, AC-130 gunships, naval gunfire, SEAL teams on the ground. None of them answer to you. Your authority comes from one thing only: having the clearest picture of the battlefield and the discipline to communicate it in each platform's own language, all of it in support of the people in contact.
I've spent thirty years finding out how directly that job translates. Every company past a certain size runs on platforms that don't report to each other: sales, operations, IT, finance. Each one speaks its own language, each one sees its own slice of the picture, and the failures happen in the gaps between them. Over 100 supply chain implementations. One of the first online grocery operations. A PE-backed RFID startup taken from concept to profit. Turnarounds, and a few moonshots nobody thought would fly. I'm the one they send when the problem is big, and every one of those problems came down to the same work: build the single picture everyone can act on, translate it into each function's language, and keep every asset pointed at the people in contact. In business, the people in contact are your customers and the crew on your floor.
It's also why the fractional model fits me. A fractional executive walks in with no positional authority, the same as a FAC checking in over someone else's fight. Nobody has to follow you. They follow the clarity of the picture. If your picture isn't better than everyone's partial view, you have no business being there.
The practice takes its name from that seat. "Wings level" is the call from a strike aircraft when it's committed: pointed at what the pilot believes is the target, done maneuvering, seconds from release. Nothing happens until the FAC, the one with the full picture, answers "cleared hot." Companies hit that moment too: committed, capital ready to release at what they believe is the problem. My job is making sure it's the right target before you pull the trigger, and telling you straight when it isn't.