Ways Jennifer can help your business
Some decisions benefit from an advisor who knows the business and stays close as things change. Others need focused attention on one question. Jennifer also leads Board and executive briefings when a group needs to work through a significant issue together.
Ongoing Board and CEO advisory
Useful when decisions keep arriving and leadership wants one independent advisor who already knows the business, rather than a new outsider for each question.
Important decisions rarely arrive one at a time. A new investment competes with existing commitments. Customer expectations change. An operating issue that seemed contained starts affecting something else.
Jennifer works with CEOs and Board leaders over time, so these conversations build on earlier decisions and what the organization has learned since. She can challenge an assumption, explore an opportunity or help work through an important choice without starting over each time.
The relationship is shaped around the decision and the role of the people engaging her. Boards retain their oversight role, and management remains accountable for running the business.
Asking for the return is where the questions start
When someone proposes a change, asking for the return on investment is a sound first question. Whether the return arrives usually depends on the questions that follow.
In her executive career, Jennifer ran the process that vetted investment proposals and tracked what funded work delivered.
- What could the business now do that it couldn't before?
- Which other parts of the business will feel the effect?
- What has to change for the benefit to show up?
- Who has the authority to make that change?
- What will the measures and incentives reward?
- How will leadership know early whether it is working?
This kind of judgment does not need to sit on the payroll full time to be useful. An advisor who already knows the business can bring those questions to each decision as it comes, without a new briefing every time, and help leadership make more of them its own habit.
Focused work on one defined question
Useful when one question needs a clear answer before more capital, people or time is committed.
Sometimes leadership has already spent weeks discussing an issue. More analysis may be useful, but it needs to answer a decision.
Jennifer works with the executives responsible to determine what information is needed, what options are realistic and what action the evidence supports. This is bounded, paid work. The engagement concludes with a written decision record covering the evidence, unresolved questions, ownership and next steps.
If further work makes sense, it is considered against the situation as it stands after that first decision, rather than assuming the original plan still applies.
Three situations where focused work helps:
Executive briefings and speaking
Useful when a Board or leadership team needs to think through a changing condition together before it decides.
Talks and facilitated briefings for Boards, leadership teams and executive audiences, drawn from Jennifer's operating and governance experience and her body of thought, Leading Through the RebelEdge. Each is shaped around the decisions the audience is facing.
To arrange one, request a private conversation and include the audience and the date.
Not sure which fits?
Describe the situation when you get in touch. Jennifer will tell you which kind of work, if any, makes sense.