Who am I? I’m Douglas Tames: a coach, advisor, and fractional CFO.

Clarity. Perspective. Intention.

I help business owners and leaders think clearly, make grounded decisions, and lead with intention. My work is built on a simple belief: when people understand their own mindset, everything else becomes easier: communication, leadership, growth, and navigating complexity.

BC: Before Coaching

Before I ever became a coach, I spent three decades in senior finance and leadership roles: including serving as CFO of the credit card business at Sears Canada and working in finance at Hudson’s Bay Company. Those years shaped how I see leaders, teams, and decision‑making.
I learned that numbers tell a story, but people tell the truth.
I learned that calm is contagious.
And I learned that clarity is rare: and powerful.
I’ve always had a calm, grounded presence: sometimes to the irritation of the Type A’s I worked for. Over time, I realized that calm isn’t passive. It’s clarity under pressure. It’s the ability to see the whole board when everyone else is reacting to the next move.
Those years gave me a front‑row seat to the pressures leaders face, the blind spots that hold them back, and the moments where intention makes all the difference. They also gave me the pattern recognition I use today - the ability to see what’s really going on beneath the surface.
Looking back, those decades weren’t separate from my coaching.

Who I Work Best With

I work best with leaders who are curious, self‑aware, and ready for clarity.
If everything feels “fine,” I’m probably not your guy.
But if something needs to shift: in your thinking, your leadership, or your direction: then we’ll do great work together.
My clients tend to be people who are:
• open to reflection
• willing to examine their patterns
• ready to think differently
• committed to growth, not reinvention
You don’t need to be perfect.
You just need to be ready.

How I Work

My coaching isn’t about giving people answers. It’s about asking the right questions: the ones that create clarity, shift perspective, and open up new possibilities.
I’ve spent more than 30 years in senior leadership roles, and I’ve coached leaders across industries and continents. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve watched people succeed, struggle, pivot, and grow. I’ve seen how the same situation can look completely different depending on the angle you view it from.
That experience allows me to offer perspective: not judgment, not direction, but perspective.
I help people see what they’ve been missing.
I help them understand the patterns underneath the problem.
I help them think more clearly so they can lead more intentionally.
My role isn’t to tell you what to do.
My role is to help you see your world differently.
When you see differently, you lead differently.

My Philosophy

I don’t ask leaders to change who they are.
I help them grow into who they can be.
My work is built on four ideas:
• Clarity: You can’t lead what you can’t see.
• Groundedness: Calm is a competitive advantage.
• Confidence: Not bravado, but the quiet certainty that comes from understanding yourself.
• Intention: The difference between instinct and leadership is intention.
Leadership isn’t about becoming someone new.
It’s about becoming more yourself: on purpose.

If you’re at a point where clarity matters more than ever: in your business, your leadership, or your life: this work can help you see what’s possible.

The Coaching Journey

In 2016 I decided it was time for something new. After nearly 30 years in public accounting and senior finance roles large companies. I was looking for a change.

I had worked with the smallest of the small all the way to the biggest of the big. I had solved complex accounting issues to enable businesses to meet their goals, implemented systems, changed processes, led large teams through complex corporate mergers, helped create a bank, helped sell a bank, led the integration for two organizations with diametrically opposed cultures. To paraphrase a famous commercial “I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two.”

With an 11 by 17 piece of paper (I believe that is the size of paper necessary to solve many business challenges), I mapped out a wide range of options. As an auditor and accountant, I had done the “score-keeping” for businesses, checked the score-keeping but what I loved most was working the people who were “playing the game”.

A franchise-broker introduced me to The Alternative Board (“TAB”). TAB brings owners of small and medium-sized businesses together on a monthly basis to work on the challenges and opportunities they face. In addition to facilitating the monthly board meetings, I would coach each of the business owners between meetings.

In my corporate life, I had seen the power of board’s of directors - the leadership, expertise, and accountability that they bring. I recognized that was something many business owners did not have.
I began coaching in 2016. Early on, I noticed something that changed the way I see leadership: often business problems aren’t really business problems. They’re mindset problems.
People weren’t stuck because they lacked intelligence or effort.
They were stuck because of the way they were thinking about the situation: the assumptions, the stories, the patterns.
I had practiced the principles of positive mindset professionally and personally since early in my career. I asked “How can I use this in my coaching?”
Coaching stopped being about solving problems.
It became about helping people see differently.

The Global Chapter

Through my network, I joined an organization in Africa providing leadership training and coaching to c-suite executives. The work is meaningful, energizing, and deeply human.
What struck me most was how universal the challenges were. Different countries, different cultures, different industries: but the same patterns of thinking, the same blind spots, the same desire for clarity and confidence.

What I Learned
Working with leaders across Africa taught me something profound:
a key aspect of leadership is the impact a leader has on the mindset of their team.
If someone works for you eight hours a day, your thinking is shaping theirs. Across industries and continents, the pattern is unmistakable:
when leaders become intentional, employee mindset and engagement shift dramatically.

A couple of leadership nuggets: 

A senior leader (and a weekend jazz musician) once told me: “Any one note isn’t a problem. It’s what comes after that matters.”
That line has stayed with me. Leadership isn’t about perfection. It’s about the next move.

Another leader, stressed as we started our session  once said to me:
“Doug, I need to change who I am as a person. That scares me.”
I told her,
“Instead of changing, could you grow?”

That moment shaped my entire philosophy.
Leadership isn’t about becoming someone new.
It’s about becoming more yourself: on purpose.

Fractional CFO

My focus for the first several years was helping business owners with everything but the financial aspects of their businesses. Obviously, the challenges and opportunities we worked on had an impact on their financials but we focused on the business issues and not the nitty gritty in their financial realm.

Six years ago, a couple of my clients asked me to look at their financial statements and processes. A couple of key discoveries - many business owners are relying on the out-of-the-box financial reports from their accounting software: and are not getting clear and concise information to help understand the health of their business nor are they getting the information necessary to make decisions. Many of these businesses lacked key financial processes like forecasting and budgeting: both necessary to guide forward looking decisions. And in general, finance was not an area of strength for many business owners.