Consulting & advisory
My engagements almost never start with a scope. They start with “we're not sure what we're supposed to do here.”
Called to fix the Wi-Fithenleft as their COO
A research chemicals company booked thirty minutes with me. The meeting ran five hours.
Booked for a keynotethenhelped set the conference's theme
Google gave me the stage and let me choose my own subject. That's a real bet for an organizer to make. It paid off.
Often it's something a team is already stuck on, and nobody wants it known that they had to call an outsider. So the arrangement is usually: fix it, hand it back, leave no fingerprints. It’s why my references are people and not case studies.
I get to work on vital projects for global organizations. Which means the cool shit is under NDA. But here’s a few clients I can name:
Google. Marvel. Netflix.
The method
Here’s what actually happens in the room: I use the skillset built on speaking tours and running comms for global orgs to capture the room’s attention. I model audiences. Boards, teams, readers, players, markets — I can usually tell you what they’re thinking, and what will make them respond. When I’m done, the status quo is out of the way.
And the real work begins.
Then I go quiet and ask questions, and I listen to what you say and what you avoid saying.
And it will not look like consulting. We play games. We make things. Because the assumptions running your organization are held in place by emotions nobody has named yet — and no slide deck has ever surfaced one. Play does. People laugh. People argue. Sometimes people get misty.
Somewhere in there, the room turns: you start asking me the questions.
When it’s done, you understand your problem. You can name it — to yourself, and to your team. And you know how to fix it.
Sometimes you take it from there. Just as often, I stay — on the team, in the build, all the way to the final deliverable.
A phone call, a workshop, a months-long project, a standing advisory seat, a fractional C-suite role — the container changes with the problem. The method never does. Advisory works best in the first hard stretch, where the real questions are what to build, what to stop building, and what the organization is going to need to survive the answer.
Lately, more and more of the questions are about AI — including the uncomfortable one about which decisions should never be delegated to a machine.
If you’re carrying the question you can’t ask anyone else, bring it to me. Answering it is my whole job.
Ask me the question