Advisory Boards
Why I feel like a Goose
I’ve plied my trade as a Family Business Solutionist for many years – acting as a best practice adviser, mediator, and strategic problem-solver. Generally, and despite the complexity and unpredictability baked into the sector, most things have worked out pretty well, for everyone.
BUT, when consulting engagements last longer than expected, and morph along the way, I sense crossing a line that separates initial tasks from what really needs doing.
Engagement Letters anticipate diversions, but they don’t resolve the disconnect, because this is not just about doing more hours of work. The nature of the work has fundamentally changed. Client and adviser mindsets need to be in sync and adapted to the new reality, but our thinking is anchored in traditional consulting tasks and relationships, and in the past engagement.
In effect, we’re trapped in conventional “Adviser-Land” – where technical solutions rule. And that’s not where the best stuff happens.
Developing high levels of trust and confidence during initial consulting engagements gives clients confidence I can help them address other significant (non-technical) needs. They’re now seeking “Significant Advice” – in the form of empathic wisdom and practical guidance, rather than technical solutions. I’m wanted for my skills as a Sounding Board, rather than as an expert.
Why does this make me feel like a goose? For failing, for many years, to appreciate that “Advisers ain’t Advisers” – in ways that really matter. Let me explain:
Most advisory engagements are designed (and priced) to deliver defined outcomes, by performing specific tasks, over a defined timeframe, using expert skills, for a calculable fee.
Once you prove yourself competent and trustworthy, you find yourself valued more for your knowledge of the client, and your demonstrated wisdom, experience, and judgement, than for technical knowledge, or skills, which are a more freely available commodity. Of course, you’ll probably have to keep using most of them anyway, perhaps in highly innovative combinations.
You develop an intimate working relationship with the business leader – closer than anything they’ve enjoyed with other staff or advisers for a long time. You become more mentor than adviser – helping them to grow and modernise the business; change culture: upgrade HR functions; establish independent governance structures and systems; and facilitate succession and leadership transition (to name a few). You lighten their load by sharing it – intellectually, emotionally, and practically.
And here comes the goose: My epiphany – that I’m really no longer acting as an Adviser (or consultant); I’ve become an Advisory Board (even if it’s a Board of One – let’s call it a “Sounding Board”). This is now a fundamentally different engagement, where I’m required to deliver “Significant Advice”, rather than technical solutions, or completed tasks.
There’s gold in this goose!
Reset for the New Paradigm
Avoid underachieving, underbilling, and feeling like a goose. Change your mindset for the engagement.
Establish different expectations, anticipate deeper relationship dynamics, and demand more appropriate fee arrangements, because you’re now working on a higher level where you should expect a substantially greater return on effort.
The nature, style, quality, depth, and value of your services have turned you into an Advisory Board (or at least a Sounding Board).
Advisory Boards
“Advisory Board” describes both a flexible concept and a tangible form of that concept.
Concept: “significant challenges” should be addressed by “Significant Advice”.
Individuals, families, and businesses face “significant challenges” when:
- Issues are complex and,
- Actual or potential consequences are profound and,
- Solutions are beyond current levels of skill, experience, and/or bandwidth and,
- The challenges are “beyond scope” for traditional advisers.
Form: Advisory Boards are problem-solving, face-to-face and/or virtual forums, where “significant” challenges are raised, solutions are developed, critical decisions are made, and new ideas and opportunities can be introduced and refined.
Advisory Boards should counsel, advise, guide, and facilitate, rather than undertake work, although members may initially be engaged for their specific expertise (eg: resolve family conflict, or develop and negotiate acceptance of a succession plan), before being invited to stay on to help leaders deal with a wide range of other challenges.
When members aren’t directly involved in providing technical solutions, they’re better able to act objectively, and think strategically.
Advisory Boards often collaborate with external networks of trustworthy advisers – members call on reliable colleagues to undertake sensitive and specialised tasks (eg: psychological support for troubled family members and complex HR projects).
There are over 600,000 active Advisory Boards operating in 2022. Most are in the USA.
Significant Advice
Successful individuals, groups, businesses, and organisations come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, relationship dynamics, and lifecycle stages. They all have unique needs, which tend to get more complicated with increases in age, size, and success. When their significant personal, family, and/or business needs aren’t being met by conventional advisers, they need Significant Advice, provided by Significant Advisers, who constitute an Advisory Board.
Significant Advice is generated by broad strategic thinking and proactive enquiry, using information gained through high touch, high trust, proactive relationships. It generates profound results, ranging from intensely personal, to highly strategic.
Significant Advice is courageous: leaders and Boards hear what they need to hear, rather than what they want to hear. Issues that need to be raised and resolved, get resolved.
Significant Advice has a high care factor. It “has the backs” of individual, family, and business recipients. It also makes things “less lonely at the top”.
Types of Advisory Board
- Sounding Board (for individuals) – usually a single adviser, acting as mentor, coach, facilitator, and strategic problem-solver. Like a “professional friend in need”.
- Family Advisory Board (for families) – one or two advisers work with a Family Council, or Family Board, as mentor, coach, best practice adviser, meeting facilitator, and strategic problem-solver.
The role is part expert governance / business adviser, and part “wise old Uncle Bob / Auntie Grace” – the guy or girl everyone in the family respects and listens to. Key responsibilities include maintaining focus, thinking, and decision-making on family stuff, when in family-mode, and on business stuff, if/when in business-mode.
- Business Advisory Board (for family businesses) – one or two advisers work with a Business Board as mentor, coach, independent governance adviser/appraiser, meeting facilitator, and strategic problem-solver. The role is mainly business-focussed, with an appreciation of what family owners need and expect from their business(es).
This is more like a conventional director’s role, with additional responsibilities for maintaining the focus of family board members on business thinking, and decision-making, rather than on the family issues that should be addressed in a wholly different environment.
Types of Boards used by Business Families and Family Businesses
| Standard Boards | Users | Advisers | Services | Complements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Family Council | Family (Family issues only) |
One or two. |
|
Business Board |
| 2. Family Board | Family & Family Business (Family & Business issues)Assumes same people have dual AND separate roles:(1) Family(2) Family Business |
One or two. |
|
n/a (Covers Family & Business needs) |
| 3. Business Board | Family Business (Business issues only) |
One or two. |
|
Family Council |
Types of Advisory Board used by Individuals, Business Families and Family Businesses
| Advisory Boards | Users | Advisers | Services | Complements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Sounding Board (for Individuals) | Successful Individuals / Entrepreneurs | One. |
|
Specialist Advisers. Business Board. |
| 2. Advisory Board (for Family & Business) | Business Families (shared business interests and/or investments) | One or two. |
|
Specialist Advisers. Family Council. Family Board (Family issues). Business Board (Business issues |
| 3. Advisory Board (for Business) May also work with Family |
Family Business (families with operating business(es). Any other Business. |
One or two. |
|
Family Board (Business issues). Business Board. |
