Strategic support at every inflection point.
CLARITY · COHESION · MOMENTUM
The work often begins before the problem has a name.
Organizations rarely arrive at an inflection point with a neatly defined problem. More often, something simply feels harder than it should.
Carnot Advisory helps leaders distinguish symptoms from causes, determine what actually needs to change, and translate that clarity into action.
How Carnot Advisory Can Help
Carnot Advisory works with executives and boards when the visible problem is only part of the story. The work is designed to clarify what is actually happening, identify what needs to change, and help leadership move forward with greater alignment and confidence.
Ways Organizations Engage.
Different situations. A common starting point: getting the problem right.
Carnot Advisory works with executives and boards at moments when the issue is consequential, interconnected, and not easily solved through a single functional lens. Engagements are shaped around the situation rather than a predetermined methodology.
Organizational Diagnostic
A focused assessment when leadership knows something is not working but does not yet have agreement on the cause. We examine the organization across structure, decision rights, financial conditions, governance, operating dynamics, and execution to identify the few issues that matter most—and the path forward.
Operating Model & Decision Effectiveness
Clarify who decides, where accountability sits, how work crosses functional boundaries, and how information and authority move through the organization. The goal is a more coherent operating model that turns strategy into coordinated execution.
Explore Operating Model & Decision Effectiveness →
Executive & Leadership Transition
Support before, during, or after a consequential leadership transition. We help clarify expectations, authority, stakeholder alignment, organizational dependencies, and the conditions required for the new leader—and the organization—to succeed.
Board–Management & Governance Effectiveness
Help boards and executives distinguish governance from management, clarify authority and expectations, strengthen decision rights, and create healthier mechanisms for oversight, accountability, and executive leadership.
Explore Board–Management & Governance Effectiveness →
About
Kim Carnot is an enterprise executive and advisor who helps leaders understand complex organizations and move them through consequential change.
Across more than two decades, she has worked from multiple seats inside organizations — CFO, COO, CSO, attorney, board leader, strategist, and advisor. That breadth gives her an unusual ability to see how leadership, governance, finance, operations, culture, and organizational structure interact.
She is frequently brought into situations where the presenting problem is not the real problem: strong people are compensating for weak systems, strategy is outrunning organizational capacity, authority is unclear, or leaders know something needs to change but do not yet agree on what.
Her role is to make the organization more legible — and the path forward more executable.
Credentials
20+ years of enterprise leadership
CFO • COO • CSO • AttorneyExecutive & board advisory
Cross-sector experience
Education • Higher Education • Healthcare • Nonprofit • Insurance • Energy • Community Organizations
Areas of Expertise
Enterprise Leadership & Strategy
Organizational Diagnostic & Operating Models
Financial & Organizational Sustainability
Executive Transitions & Leadership Advisory
Governance & Board–Management Effectiveness
Change, Alignment & Execution
How Carnot Advisory Works
Carnot Advisory is often brought in when leaders know something needs to change, but the organization has not yet reached shared clarity about the problem, the priorities, or the path forward.
The work begins by making the organization more legible — understanding how leadership, governance, structure, finance, operations, culture, and decision-making are interacting in practice.
See the Whole System
Look beyond the presenting issue to understand the organizational conditions shaping performance.
Diagnose the Real Problem
Distinguish symptoms from causes before committing to solutions.
Create Shared Clarity
Help executives, boards, and leadership teams develop a common understanding of what is happening, what matters most, and where authority sits.
Build for Execution
Translate insight into decisions, priorities, ownership, and practical next steps that the organization can actually carry forward.
Carnot Advisory is particularly useful during executive transitions, periods of stalled execution, financial or organizational pressure, blurred accountability, governance tension, or other moments when leadership needs greater clarity before deciding what to change.
The starting point is not a predetermined solution.
It is getting the problem right.
Clarity creates cohesion.
Cohesion creates momentum.
Experience from inside the decisions.
Enterprise leadership
CFO · COO · CSO · Acting Vice President · Senior executive roles
Board & governance perspective
Board leadership, governance, executive accountability and institutional stewardship
Complex environments
Education · Higher education · Healthcare · Nonprofit · Energy · Insurance
Carnot Advisory brings the perspective of someone who has not only advised organizations through these conditions, but has led from inside them.
Experience Behind the Advisory
Carnot Advisory is informed by experience leading complex organizations from inside the executive seat - not only advising from outside it. The examples below reflect prior executive and consulting work across organizational design, enterprise planning, financial sustainability, governance, and institutional change.
Organizational & Workforce Diagnostic
CSU San Marcos
Situation. Facilities leadership wanted an independent assessment of whether the organization's structure, leadership capacity, and staffing were aligned with the needs of the campus - and where efficiencies could be realized without compromising service.
What I led. Conducted a multi-part organizational and workforce diagnostic examining leadership and team capabilities, organizational structure, spans of control, reporting relationships, vacancies, anticipated retirements, work-order volume and type, campus scale, workload assumptions, and industry benchmarks. The analysis also considered which positions should be backfilled, redesigned, eliminated, or added as the organization evolved.
Result. A multi-year staffing and organizational model that gave leadership a structured basis for balancing cost discipline, succession needs, and service capacity.
Enterprise Master Planning
University of San Diego
Situation. USD needed to update its long-range campus master plan and reconcile competing academic, operational, financial, student-life, and physical-planning priorities.
What I led. Served as the university's internal project lead, managing the campus-side process in coordination with M.W. Steele Group. Convened and facilitated the cross-campus leadership group, established agendas and milestones, managed deliverables, synthesized competing stakeholder priorities, and helped leaders move from functional interests toward an enterprise view of the campus's future.
Result. An approved campus master plan that created a shared framework for long-term priorities and helped guide subsequent campus development.
Enterprise Planning Under Pressure
San Diego State University
Situation. During COVID-19, SDSU needed a coordinated campus-wide planning process for immediate response and the eventual return of students, employees, and visitors.
What I led. As Planning Section Chief within the Emergency Operations Center, led the university-wide planning function across academic affairs, business operations, athletics, environmental health and safety, facilities, and other campus functions. Established recurring cross-functional planning meetings, synthesized rapidly changing information, facilitated recommendations and decisions, maintained a common operating record, and provided regular updates into the Emergency Operations Center and senior leadership.
Result. A disciplined enterprise planning process that created a shared operating picture, clearer coordination, and more consistent communication across functions that did not ordinarily plan together.
Financial Recovery & Organizational Sustainability
Independent School
Situation. A complex independent school faced a recurring structural operating deficit that required more than an annual budget adjustment.
What I led. Developed a multi-year recovery and sustainability framework integrating enrollment, retention, tuition yield, financial assistance, staffing, operating costs, auxiliary revenue, liquidity, and governance reporting. Built the recovery dashboard and decision cadence used by leadership and the Finance Committee to monitor performance, test assumptions, and sequence difficult choices.
Result. A materially improved operating outlook and a clearer path toward sustainable performance, with stronger visibility into the financial drivers and tradeoffs underlying enrollment, staffing, tuition, and resource decisions.
Executive Briefs
Deeper perspectives for leaders navigating consequential organizational challenges.
Why Good Leadership Teams Still Struggle
How capable executives can still produce fragmented performance when the organization does not support coordinated enterprise execution.
When Indispensable Leadership Becomes an Organizational Risk
How exceptional leaders can quietly compensate for organizational capabilities that were never built.
When Indispensable Leadership Becomes an Organizational Risk
How exceptional leaders can quietly compensate for organizational capabilities that were never built.
Looking for shorter perspectives?
Carnot Advisory Insights offer concise perspectives on recurring leadership, execution, governance, organizational design, transition, and sustainability challenges.
Executive Briefs
Deeper perspectives for leaders navigating consequential organizational challenges.
Why Good Leadership Teams Still Struggle
How capable executives can still produce fragmented performance when the organization does not support coordinated enterprise execution.
When Indispensable Leadership Becomes an Organizational Risk
How exceptional leaders can quietly compensate for organizational capabilities that were never built.
The Org Chart Is Not the Operating System
Why formal authority and actual decision-making often diverge.
Looking for shorter perspectives?
Carnot Advisory Insights offer concise perspectives on recurring leadership, execution, governance, organizational design, transition, and sustainability challenges.