Advisory · by introduction
For the person who
owns the decision.
Founders, chief executives, boards, and families whose wealth has outgrown the structures around it. Thirty years of being called when a senior leader’s behavior has become the constraint — and staying long enough to see it change.
This is not a program you buy off a page. It starts with an introduction.
Where this
comes from.
Thirty years in rooms where the stakes made the behavior worse, not better.
- The White House Coaching leaders across three administrations.
- U.S. Department of Defense Senior leadership, where authority is the job and the failure mode is authority used badly.
- Fortune 500 C-suites American Express, Microsoft, Dell, AT&T, Nestlé, Deloitte, CIBC, BMO, Brookfield and others — executive teams, not audiences.
- Private family wealth Members of a private peer community for nine-figure families. Succession, the next generation, and the point where the family and the enterprise stop being separable.
- Founder-led companies The seat with no peer inside the building, which is usually the whole problem.
Three seats.
The work only holds if the person in the room can actually change the thing being discussed.
-
Founders and
chief executivesThe seat where nobody tells you the truth on time, because everyone reports to you and everyone has watched what happened to the last person who tried. Most of this work starts here, and most of it starts with the founder saying the quiet thing out loud.
-
Boards and
executive teamsTwo strong leaders who cannot work together. A chief executive the board can no longer read. Political tension at the top that is quietly pricing itself into every decision below it. The group is the client, not one person in it.
-
Families of
significant wealthWhere the balance sheet has outgrown the structures around it and the hardest conversations are the family ones. Succession, the next generation, and the moment a shared surname stops being an advantage. Handled privately, and never referenced afterwards.
The signals
You probably know already.
Advisory tends to be the right call when one of these is true.
The same issue keeps coming back with a new name
You have solved it three times. It is not a process problem. Something about how this group behaves keeps regenerating it.
Two strong leaders cannot work together
Both are good. Both are right. The organization is paying for the gap between them and everyone has stopped mentioning it.
Nobody brings you bad news early
By the time a problem reaches you it is expensive. That is a culture signal, and it usually points at how the last owner of a problem got treated.
You are the bottleneck and you know it
The hardest one to say out loud, and the most common reason a founder calls. Worth saying out loud.
How it works
Four steps, no mystery.
- OneAn introduction, then a real conversation. Not a discovery call with a deck at the end. Someone who has done this work makes the introduction, you describe the situation, and I tell you plainly whether I am useful — including when the answer is no.
- TwoGet the data. Usually the MRPI — a 360 behavioral inventory — run across the leadership group, always with a formal debrief. You cannot coach a gap nobody has seen.
- ThreeWork it in the room. Sessions with the team, and one-to-one where it needs to be one-to-one. The frameworks get taught and then immediately used on the live problem.
- FourStay long enough to matter. Behavior change has a half-life. Ongoing cadence so the language survives contact with a bad quarter.
The standard
Adult state, both directions.
You will get facts, options and a recommendation. Not reassurance, and not a lecture. That runs both ways — I expect the same from you when something I suggest is wrong.
I am not here to be liked in the room. I am here to be useful after it.
Twenty years
later.
The measure of this work is not the room on the day. It is whether anything is different a year on.
I did that program twenty years ago. It was life changing for me.
How this starts
By introduction.
Advisory clients reach me through someone I have already worked with, and I work with the person who owns the decision — the founder, the chief executive, the board, the principal. Not a level down. If that is you and you do not have the introduction, write anyway and say so.
Everything discussed stays private, including the fact of the conversation.