Become the name they think of first.

Most strategy engagements fail before the first slide deck is built. Here's the uncomfortable truth I've learned after 12 years in consulting: The brief is rarely the real problem. A manufacturing client hired us to cut costs by 15%. Six weeks in, we discovered the actual issue: their top operations manager had been approving invoices for a ghost vendor since 2019. Cost wasn't the problem. Trust was. This happens more often than anyone admits. The presenting problem is a symptom. The real problem lives two layers deeper — in the incentives, the relationships, the things no one says in the first meeting. My diagnostic framework now starts with three questions most consultants skip: → Who benefits from the current situation staying broken? → What would have to be true for this not to be your fault? → What are you afraid we'll find? The answers to those questions tell me more than any financial model. If you're a consultant, try asking question three in your next discovery call. Watch what happens.

I almost walked out of a board meeting in 2021. The CEO had just presented my 40-page transformation roadmap to the board — and then added: "We'll start the easy parts first." There are no easy parts. That's the point. I'd spent 8 weeks mapping the org's capability gaps, interviewing 23 leaders, and running scenario modelling across three strategic options. The hardest recommendation — restructuring two business units — was the one that would actually work. And it was the one being shelved. I stayed. I pushed back. Politely, but clearly. "If we sequence this to protect comfort, we're not doing strategy. We're doing theatre." Silence. Then the CFO nodded. They restructured the units six months later. Revenue grew 22% the following year. The lesson I carry into every engagement: your job isn't to make clients comfortable. It's to make them successful. Sometimes those are the same thing. Often, they're not. The consultants who last are the ones willing to say the hard thing in the right way.

After 200+ strategy projects, I've noticed that every organizational problem fits into one of four categories. I call it the PACE Framework: P — Process failure The way work gets done is broken. Meetings produce no decisions. Handoffs lose information. Accountability sits with everyone, so it sits with no one. A — Alignment failure Different teams are optimizing for different goals. Sales wants volume. Finance wants margin. Product wants complexity. No one told them to row the same direction. C — Capability failure The strategy is sound. The people don't have the skills to execute it yet. This is more common than leaders want to admit — and more fixable than they expect. E — Energy failure The org is burned out, disengaged, or paralysed by past failures. The right answer is known. No one believes it will actually happen. Most problems involve more than one. The diagnostic question I start every engagement with: "Which of these is the primary drag?" Get that right, and the solution becomes obvious. Get it wrong, and you'll solve the wrong problem brilliantly.