What we do
Four practices. One standard of counsel.
We advise on the decisions that shape a company's next decade — through a small number of practices we can pursue with genuine depth, led by the firm's principals from first meeting to last.
The practices
Depth over breadth, deliberately.
Corporate Strategy
Who it is for
Boards and chief executives facing questions of positioning, capital allocation, or portfolio shape — the decisions that cannot be delegated and cannot be unmade.
What an engagement covers
Where to compete and where to retreat, how to allocate capital when the evidence is genuinely ambiguous, and how to sequence a portfolio so that strategy survives the budget process.
In practice
A second-generation manufacturer facing consolidation in its category asked whether to sell, acquire, or hold. Our diagnostic reframed the question from 'who would buy us' to 'which of our three product lines still earns its capital' — and the resulting divestiture funded a decade of growth in the remaining two.
Growth & Market Entry
Who it is for
Leadership teams weighing expansion into new markets, new channels, or new categories — companies that cannot afford to learn by losing money.
What an engagement covers
Evidence-led assessment of where growth is actually available, what entry genuinely costs, which sequence of commitments is reversible, and which ones are not.
In practice
A regional services firm considering a national expansion believed its constraint was sales capacity. The diagnostic found the constraint was delivery: two of its five service lines could not scale past the metro area. The engagement redirected the expansion to the three lines that could — and deferred the rest without loss.
Operations & Performance
Who it is for
Executives who need structural improvement in margin or throughput — not another cost-cutting program that erodes the organization's capacity to grow.
What an engagement covers
Where margin is actually created and destroyed across the operation, which improvements survive contact with the real organization, and how to sequence change without breaking what works.
In practice
A specialty distributor asked us to find ten points of margin. We found four — and showed why the other six would have cost more than they returned, in capacity the company would need within eighteen months. The board called the smaller number the more valuable answer.
Leadership & Governance
Who it is for
Boards and executive teams whose binding constraint is alignment itself — succession, governance transitions, or a leadership team that has stopped deciding well together.
What an engagement covers
Board and executive-team effectiveness, succession design, and the quiet work of making a leadership group capable of the decisions the strategy requires.
In practice
A family-owned company preparing for its first non-family chief executive asked us to design the transition. The engagement turned out to be about the board: until governance separated ownership questions from management questions, no successor could succeed. The transition has now held through its third year.
How we work with you
Three ways in. The same counsel in each.
Focused Diagnostic
A bounded question, answered with evidence.
Three to five weeks of diagnostic work ending in a decision map: what is actually true, what the real choices are, and how reversible each one is. You leave with clarity whether or not a larger engagement follows.
Best for: Leadership teams who need to see their situation clearly before committing capital to it.
Full Engagement
The complete method, start to execution.
Eight to sixteen weeks through all four steps — diagnose, frame, decide, execute — with principals in the working sessions and honest reporting when reality diverges from the plan.
Best for: Consequential decisions already underway, where the cost of a wrong answer compounds monthly.
Ongoing Counsel
A standing relationship, not a metered retainer.
Quarterly working sessions tied to the decisions on your calendar, with access to your principals between sessions when a question cannot wait for the quarter. Fixed annual fee, defined in advance.
Best for: Boards and chief executives who want a counselor with standing context rather than a vendor re-briefed each time.
Engagements, plainly
How the business works.
Scope before signature
Scope is set in a working conversation, not a proposal battle. We write what we will do, what you will contribute, and what the engagement will produce into the engagement letter — and we decline to start until all three are explicit.
A fixed fee, agreed up front
Every engagement is a fixed fee based on scope — never billable hours. You know the number before you commit, and it does not change unless the scope does. We would rather lose work than renegotiate it mid-course.
Eight to sixteen weeks, end to end
That is the honest arc of most engagements. Diagnostic work moves quickly; execution support runs as long as you want us in the room. We do not sell open-ended timelines, because open-ended timelines are how advisory work stops being accountable.
What we don't do
A short list, held deliberately.
Selectivity is not posture; it is the reason the counsel is worth taking. We decline work in four categories:
Validation work. If the answer has already been decided and you need it decorated, we are the wrong firm — and we will say so kindly.
Open-ended retainers without a question. Counsel without a defined decision drifts into overhead, for both of us.
Industries we cannot examine honestly. If we lack the standing to challenge your assumptions, our agreement is worth nothing.
Work delegated to a bench. Engagements are led by principals, or they are not ours to take.
Begin the conversation
Bring us the decision you keep deferring.
A first consultation is a working session, not a sales call. You will leave with a clearer articulation of your problem — whether or not we work together.
Request a consultationWe respond to every inquiry within two business days.