Everyone around you has a reason to agree with you.
I don’t.
Twenty-five years making high-stakes decisions at Managing Director level in investment banking, most recently at Deutsche Bank. Today, I work directly with people carrying decisions that matter, for their business, their career, their life, without anyone around them who is genuinely incentivised to be honest about it. I have no stake in the answer. That's the whole point.
Everyone advising a decision has a stake in the answer. The person actually carrying the decision rarely has anyone who’s free of one.
This is for: Whoever ends up carrying the weight of the decision. Could be a business call everyone’s watching you make. Could be something only you know you’re carrying.
This isn’t for: The C-suite of large corporates. They already have boards, NEDs, and advisors doing this job. Imperfectly, but doing it.
Not defined by company size or seniority or industry. Defined by carrying real decision weight without anyone around you who is incentivised to be honest. Everyone around a decision-maker has a reason to agree with them: a job, a fee, a relationship, a stake in what you choose next.
I have none of those.
How it works
Fortnightly Session. Your topic, your agenda
On Call. For the decisions that matter. Not day-to-day running, that’s still yours.
Small client list. Attention stays big.
Confidential. No reporting.
What’s the reality?
The Method
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Which of those actually gets you what you want?
Play the tape forward. How do those choices look?
What’s the real cost and benefit of each?
What are the choices in front of you?
Small, consistent corrections, applied over time, compound into a completely different trajectory.
Not a quick fix. What changes is what you catch before it costs you: the deal, the pattern, the decision made for the wrong reasons.
A bad decision caught today can shape the next ten years.
Two clients. The same process. Anonymised, because the specifics belong to them.
Manufacturing - Inherited Business
The Debt, the Decision, the Deal He Turned Down
An owner inherited a specialist manufacturer with significant debt. An investor offered capital and a stake for a salaried role, the numbers showed he'd recoup it within two years.
"Investor or employee, not both."
The deal was turned down, the underlying problem solved far more cheaply. Est. £2.5M valuation, three years on. He describes our relationship as functioning like an informal non-executive director.
Finance - Senior Professional
The Pattern That Was Quietly Costing Them - Until It Wasn’t
A senior professional, well regarded for their ability, had fallen into a pattern that was holding them back, one they could see clearly but kept repeating anyway.
The behaviour stopped being something that happened to them and became a decision they were making, repeatedly, that they could choose differently.
Outcome: Headhunted into a more senior role at a larger competitor, 18 months on.