CEO & Board Advisory

A standing counsel relationship with an experienced operator: someone a CEO or founder thinks with before operating decisions harden. In practice it is a fixed cadence of confidential working sessions, access between them when something cannot wait, written reads on the decisions that carry real weight, and help raising board and investor reporting to a standard that survives questioning. It differs from consulting in shape — there is no project and no deck — and from coaching in substance: the work is the decision itself, not the CEO’s development. The value is a second operating mind with evidence behind it and no stake in your org chart.

No, and the distinction is deliberate. A fractional CEO takes the chief executive’s seat part-time — holding authority, leading the team, accountable for the company. I do not take that seat, in any fraction. I advise the person in it: CEOs, founders and boards, on operations. The reason is design, not modesty. Counsel is only worth having if it is independent, and independence dies the moment the advisor holds a position in the structure. If your company genuinely needs an executive in a seat, the honest routes are a fractional COO, an interim COO or a permanent hire — not an advisor pretending to be one.

Authority and ownership. As a fractional COO I sit inside the leadership team, hold operating authority, chair the reviews and stay accountable for whether the operating model holds — an executive role, supplied part-time. As an advisor I hold no authority at all: I inform your decisions rather than make them, and I never stand between you and your team. The advisory is lighter, purely counsel, and priced accordingly. The two can be sequenced — advisory sometimes surfaces build work that justifies an operating engagement, and a completed engagement sometimes tapers into standing counsel — but at any given moment the role is one or the other, stated plainly.

A coach works on you — your leadership, your patterns, your growth. I work on the decision — the restructure, the plan, the hire, the number that is drifting. The distinction shows up in the session itself: a coach asks questions to develop your thinking; I bring an operating view of my own, formed from the evidence, and argue it. Both are legitimate; they are simply different instruments. Many CEOs keep both, and they do not collide — the coach makes you a better decision-maker over time, while I help make this quarter’s specific decisions better. If what you mainly need is development rather than counsel, a coach is the right spend.

A standing session every two or four weeks, sized to the weight of what is on your desk — sixty to ninety minutes, confidential, agenda owned by you. Between sessions you have direct access when a decision cannot wait; standing counsel that is unavailable in the exact week it matters is theatre. Around board meetings and investor events the rhythm flexes: pack review, question preparation, a dry run where it earns its place. And when a genuinely major call approaches, we treat it as a piece of work rather than a conversation — options laid out, consequences traced, a written recommendation you can hold against reality afterwards.

Yes, in the advisory sense. I prepare CEOs for board and investor meetings, help build the operating section of the pack, and — where the company wants it — give the board an independent read on the operating plan or on a specific concern. Years of my executive work were board- and investor-facing: assembling the operating view, presenting it, and defending it under questioning at global scale. What I do not do is take a board seat or act as a director. The role stays advisory on both sides of the table, which is exactly what lets each side trust the read.

Bluntly: the engagement does not work without it. CEOs bring me the things they cannot say in their own leadership meetings — doubts about a plan, a hire that is not working, a number that worries them. Everything inside the counsel stays inside it, under NDA where the company prefers the formality. Where I advise both a CEO and their board, the contracting is explicit up front about what flows in each direction, because trust that has to be negotiated after the fact is already damaged. I also do not trade in other clients’ situations — a discretion you should demand from anyone in this role.

A flat monthly retainer, scaled to cadence and access — materially lighter than a fractional COO engagement because the time commitment is lighter, and never billed by the hour, because metered counsel changes what people ask. The retainer covers the standing sessions, between-session access and the written reads; board-cycle support is scoped in from the start rather than surprising you later. Against the alternatives — a consulting study for each big decision, or the cost of one major operating call that hardened untested — a standing advisor is modest money. Most CEOs know within the first quarter whether the counsel pays; the retainer runs month to month partly so that judgement stays easy to act on.

Apply four filters. First, operating evidence: have they actually run operations at scale, with numbers they can show — or is the counsel built on frameworks? Second, independence: no seat, no equity angle and no services pipeline the advice conveniently feeds. Third, writing: an advisor who will put a recommendation in writing is accepting accountability; one who only talks is not. Fourth, the willingness to disagree with you in the room — ask their references when it last happened. The best CEO advisor for you is the one who clears all four and whose scars match the decisions you are facing; the label matters far less than the filters.

Nineteen years inside operations at scale, most recently as Senior Director, Business Excellence at Publicis Groupe — 500+ clients, teams of more than 2,000 people, and upwards of USD 750 million in annual media spend, for brands including Disney, Samsung, Adobe and P&G. The results are specific: quality lifted from 95% to 99% across 2,000+ campaigns and 450 clients; a billing cycle compressed from roughly two months to fifteen days across 75 entities; a QA framework that protected more than USD 20 million in client billings. Advisory is the same discipline applied earlier in the decision — the counsel draws on what the operating work proved.