Advisory Work
Experienced judgement applied to a decision you are already carrying — brought by someone who has directed the operations, argued the theory in a lecture hall, and had to live with the results of both.
Not a Report
Most advisory work ends in a document. A good document, often — and one that describes a decision rather than making it any easier to take. The difference between analysis and advice is whether someone on the other side of the table has carried the consequence of being wrong.
This work is built the other way round. It starts from the decision you are actually facing, applies three decades of operating experience and the research behind two books to it, and ends when you can act — with a method you can use again the next time, not a binder you have to reread.
30Years in industry
Directing hospitality and hotel operations, finance and administration, project and facilities management, consultancy and training — across roles from Director of Finance & Administration to Executive Director.
Four Kinds of Problem
The four areas where the experience runs deep enough to be worth paying for. Most engagements sit across two of them; the brief decides which leads.
Leadership & Performance
Most organisations don't have a strategy problem — they have a problem with what happens after the meeting that agreed one.
- How decisions are made and escalated
- Who owns an outcome once the meeting ends
- Where responsibility and authority have come apart
Hospitality & Service Quality
Service quality isn't a training problem — it's what the operating model produces when nobody is watching.
- Standards the operation can actually deliver
- Hotel operations, front of house to back office
- Guest experience, designed rather than left to chance
Strategy & Entrepreneurship
The strategic question is rarely what to do next — it's what to stop doing to make room for it.
- Framing what is actually being chosen between
- Positioning: what the business is for, and to whom
- Growth and market-entry, tested against resourcing
Workshops & Training
Training built on someone else's examples teaches people to solve someone else's problem.
- Communication, execution and digital innovation
- Built around a live constraint, not a published case
- Half-day, full-day or a series — in person or in-house
Three Phases
Every engagement is scoped to the decision it exists to serve, so nothing here is a fixed package. What does not vary is the shape: understand it, work it, hand it over.
The scoping conversation
A conversation about the decision you are facing, what you have already tried, and what is genuinely constraining you rather than what is most visible. It ends with an honest answer about whether this is the right help — and a recommendation elsewhere if it is not.
Ends with
A defined problem, and a decision about whether to proceed
The work
The engagement proper, scoped to what the problem needs: time with the people carrying the decision, examination of how the thing actually operates, and a method put against it until something moves. Findings are discussed as they emerge, not saved for a presentation.
Ends with
A position you can act on, argued and tested with your team
The handover
What was decided, why, and what has to hold for it to keep working — set down in a form your team can use after the engagement ends. The aim is that the method transfers, so the next decision of the same kind does not need an outside pair of hands.
Ends with
A method your team can run without me
Fees and availability are agreed per engagement and depend on scope, so there is no rate card here. Ask, and you will get a straight figure for the work you have described.
Start With the Decision
Describe the decision you are facing and the timeline you are working to. If this is the right kind of help you will get a scoping conversation; if it is not, you will be told so plainly, and pointed somewhere better where I can.
Advisory enquiries begin with a scoping conversation before anything is quoted or scheduled.