The method
What actually happens.
A twelve month relationship, described plainly enough that you can decide without needing another conversation to find out.
First, the word
The frontier is the edge of your own playbook, not the edge of technology.
It is the point where the things that made you good at this stop being sufficient, and there is no obvious next move to copy from anyone you respect.
Every leader reaches it. It arrives at a different size for everyone and it rarely announces itself as a strategic problem. Usually it shows up as a decision that keeps moving to the bottom of the list, or a version of yourself you have started performing because the real one no longer fits the role.
That edge is what this work is about. Not a market, not a category, and not a class of tools.
The year, in five parts.
The first session
Half a day
Longer than the rest, and not about goals. I want the shape of the year ahead, the decisions already visible on it, the people around you and which of them you can actually say things to. By the end we both know whether there is real work here. Most of what we end up spending the year on is not on the list you bring, and that is normal rather than a failure of preparation.
Then monthly
Three hours, same slot
Held in your diary for the year. Three hours because two is enough for an update and not enough to get underneath it. There is no curriculum. You bring what is live, and if nothing is live we use the time on what you have been putting off, which is usually the more valuable hour of the two.
Between sessions
When you need it
You can reach me. Most people use it three or four times a year, always when something has moved and they want to think out loud before they commit to a position. There is no fair use policy and no meter running. Someone who would abuse it would not have got through the first conversation.
Twice a year, longer
A full day, off site
For the things that will not fit in an hour. A strategy you are not convinced by. A structure that has stopped working. Occasionally the question of whether you still want the job, which is legitimate to examine and hard to raise anywhere else.
After each session
Within two days
You get a written note: what we covered, what you decided, what you said you would do. It belongs to you and I keep no copy of it.
What I bring.
- Eighteen years of running things and shipping them, so we can spend the session on your problem rather than on the shape of it. I have carried a number, missed one, restructured a team, sold a company and worked inside organisations large enough to be their own weather system.
- Pattern recognition from watching the same three or four mistakes repeat across very different companies.
- Enough technical fluency that a decision involving systems does not have to be translated for me first.
- No stake in what you decide, other than that it is genuinely yours.
What I do not.
- Not therapy. If what is in the way is properly clinical I will say so early and help you find the right person, and I will not pretend the boundary is blurry.
- Not consulting. No strategy documents, no team, nothing implemented on your behalf.
- Not an introduction service. I will make an introduction when it is genuinely useful, and I will not sell you access as a feature.
- Not encouragement. If something you have done is good I will say so once, and then we will move on to the part that is not.
Confidentiality, as a policy.
Not a promise, because everyone promises. These are the specifics, and they are the same specifics that appear in the terms you would sign.
- No client file exists. My working notes are on paper during the session and destroyed afterwards.
- Nothing is recorded or transcribed, and nothing goes into a tool that keeps it.
- The written summary is yours. I do not retain a copy, so if you lose it I cannot send it again.
- Nothing from a session becomes an example, an anecdote or a post, anonymised or otherwise.
- I will not confirm to anyone that we work together unless you have told me in writing that I may.
- If a conflict of interest ever arises, I tell you at the point it arises and you decide what happens next.
If you want this in a signed agreement before the first session, ask and I will send one. Several people have and it has never been a difficult conversation.
The first conversation.
Thirty minutes
Nothing to prepare. You describe the situation. I ask questions, most of them about what you have already tried and who you have already talked to.
One hard question
I will ask what you want to be different in a year, and then push on the answer, because the first version is usually the one that sounds reasonable rather than the one that is true.
A straight answer
At the end one of us says whether this is right. If it is not, I will tell you what I think you need and who is better placed to do it. That happens often enough that you should not read the call as a formality.
If it is right, we start with a single day or with the twelve months. I hold no more than eight of these relationships at a time.
The first conversation
Most people come to this after a year of thinking about it.
Thirty minutes, nothing to prepare. You describe the situation, I ask questions, and at the end I tell you plainly whether I am the right person for it. Often I am not, and knowing that costs you an afternoon rather than a year.
Apply for a placeRead by me, and by nobody else.