Find the friction.
Global Perspective. Practical Execution.
Build the workflow that makes AI worth it.
Traverse fixes the workflows underneath before you automate. Operational clarity first, AI second.
Founder-led, with more than 20 years running operations across the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Get my free AI Readiness Snapshot12 questions. You get a starting 30/60/90-day roadmap.
Strategy
Operations
Leadership
Transformation
You have to budget for AI next year. Do you have the plan?
If you are a CEO, COO, CHRO, or VP of Operations, you likely have a directive to put real money behind AI next year. The plan is due before the budget is set, and most leaders are not sure where to focus first.
The free AI Readiness Snapshot gives you a starting point in about 5 minutes: a directional readout plus an illustrative 30, 60, and 90-day starting roadmap you can take straight into your planning sessions. It points to where to look first, and what may be worth funding now versus later, once your workflows can support it.
Get my free AI Readiness Snapshot12 questions. You get a starting 30/60/90-day roadmap.This is you if:
You have been handed an AI budget mandate for next year and no clear place to start.
You need a defensible plan to bring to your team, not a list of tools to buy.
You have already paid for AI tools and adoption is flat. The problem is workflow, not licenses.
You lead a complex operation and need to align investment, workflow change, and executive ownership before the budget is set.
The Flagship Engagement
One Engagement. Three Outcomes.
Find the friction. Fix the work. Make smarter AI investments.
A focused Map → Fix → Move engagement. Map goes inside the operation to find where AI and automation will actually improve the business. Fix redesigns the highest-value workflows first. Move proves value with a targeted pilot and leaves leadership a board-ready roadmap.
Get my free AI Readiness Snapshot12 questions. You get a starting 30/60/90-day roadmap.Book your Strategy Conversation
A Traverse engagement delivers
- Operational friction map
- AI opportunity portfolio
- Recommendations on what not to automate
- Workflow redesign recommendations
- Leadership and guardrails recommendations
- A targeted pilot
- 12-18 month roadmap
- Budget and investment priorities
Technical AI consultants answer “Can we build it?” Traverse answers: Should we build it? Where will it create value? What must change for it to succeed?
Why Traverse
Traverse is led by Dave Freeman, an operator with more than 20 years running operations across the U.S., Europe and Asia. The edge is executive operating judgment, not technical tooling. Most firms can tell you whether something can be built. Traverse tells you whether it should be, where it creates value, what has to change for people to actually use it, and how leadership captures the return.
How it works
Map the friction. Fix the workflow. Move only what is ready.
Standardize before you build.
Automate what's ready, AI last.
Three steps, always in this order. Nothing gets automated until it has been fixed.
Automation doesn't fix chaos. It scales it.
Most companies don't have a technology problem. They have unclear ownership, broken handoffs, communication gaps, and leadership alignment problems. New systems accelerate what already exists. If the day-to-day work is messy, the mess scales too. We fix the foundation first.
We bring direction.Clarity.Momentum.
Unclear Ownership
When no one is sure who decides, approves, or owns an outcome, work stalls, gets duplicated, or falls through the cracks.
Workflow Friction
Broken processes slow execution no matter what systems sit on top of them.
Communication Gaps
Silos that prevent strategic alignment across teams.
Cross-Cultural Misalignment
Global teams operating on divergent assumptions.
Human-Centered AI Adoption
"When intelligence becomes cheap, judgment becomes expensive."
Technology should make your organization less robotic, not more. By automating the routine, we create space for human insight, strategic judgment, and meaningful connection.
Reducing Friction
Across people, workflows, and cultures.
Workflow Diagnosis
Finding where work slows down, stalls, or gets redone, and clearing it before scaling any solution.
Execution Roadmaps
Practical roadmaps for clearer ownership, faster execution, and measurable gains.
Leadership Alignment
Ensuring executives share a unified vision for execution.
Cross-Cultural Execution
Helping teams in different countries work from the same assumptions.
The Traverse Method
A simple, practical way to diagnose operational friction, repair the workflow, and make the improvement last across people, systems, and teams.
"Clarity comes before execution. Execution comes before scale."
Map
Diagnose where the real friction is.We locate where work actually slows down, not where it's assumed to, and map how the process really happens versus how it's documented.
- Locate real friction points.
- Map actual workflow vs. documented workflow.
Fix
Redesign the workflow before any system touches it.We redesign the broken process itself first, stripping out steps that don't add value, before any new tool or automation gets introduced.
- Strip non-value-add steps.
- Redesign before introducing new systems.
Move
Make the fix durable and put it to work.We centralize scattered tools and information into one source of truth, automate the repeatable manual work, and embed people and systems into the new structure, not bolt them onto the old one. Then we measure against a baseline on a real cadence.
- Create one source of truth and automate repeatable work.
- Measure against a baseline on a real cadence.
7 Signs Your Workflows Need Fixing Before AI
Friction hides in plain sight. Before investing in new systems, check that the day-to-day work is solid enough to support them.
Get my free AI Readiness Snapshot12 questions. You get a starting 30/60/90-day roadmap.Initiatives stall between planning and execution.
Communication silos prevent cross-functional alignment.
Teams rely on manual workarounds for broken processes.
Leadership lacks a unified vision for operating model change.
Cultural differences cause recurring friction in global teams.
Systems multiply without increasing productivity.
High-value talent spends too much time on low-value tasks.
Built for Complexity Across Borders, Teams, and Functions
Multi-site, multi-team, cross-border operations are where the friction hides.
U.S.-Asia Business Experience
Navigating nuanced cultural contexts to drive global alignment.
People Operations & Leadership
Aligning human capital with operating priorities and execution standards.
Workflow & Execution Systems
Building resilient processes that withstand scaling pressure.
About
About Traverse
Traverse is a founder-led workflow and operations practice. We help leaders navigate complexity by fixing the work underneath before they automate it. One method, always in order: Map → Fix → Move.
Meet Dave Freeman, Founder
Dave Freeman grew up in Taiwan, speaks Mandarin, and has spent his career where people, process and borders meet. Most recently, he has led people operations and cross-border teams across 11 countries, grown a team from 56 to 150 across Taipei, Japan and Europe, and stood up offices in Japan, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.
That work taught him one thing: new tools speed up whatever is already there. So Traverse starts with the workflow, not the software. Clarity first.
Based in the Indianapolis area.
Connect with Dave on LinkedInGet my free AI Readiness Snapshot12 questions. You get a starting 30/60/90-day roadmap.Book your Strategy Conversation
How Engagements Typically Work
A structured, pragmatic approach to reducing friction. We begin with clarity before moving to implementation.
Snapshot
Take the free 12-question AI Readiness Snapshot to surface directional signals across your operating system, with an illustrative 30, 60, and 90-day starting roadmap to prepare for planning.
Strategy Conversation
Discuss the signals, your business mandate, and whether a deeper operating engagement is the right next step.
Diagnostic: Map begins
The first paid step. We test what the Snapshot surfaced against how work actually gets done (workflows, how people use tools, and the economics), then walk your leaders through what we found and what to fix first. If you continue into Advisory, the Diagnostic is credited toward it.
Fix
Redesign the highest-value workflows first, based on what Map found.
Move
Prove value with a targeted pilot and leave leadership with a board-ready roadmap for investment.
What changes
What we work toward with every leadership team:
- Clearer ownership and faster decisions
- Simpler, more consistent workflows
- Faster coordination across teams and borders
- Talent freed from low-value manual work
- AI investment tied to measurable results
From Dave on LinkedIn
One practical idea a week on fixing the workflow before you automate.
Reduce Friction. Increase Clarity.Build a More Human Organization.
If your organization is growing more complex, operating across borders, or struggling to execute cleanly across teams and cultures, Traverse can help.