A conversation with no performance in it.

Most people who write to me have been thinking about it for a while. Some have had this page open in a tab for a month.

That is not a character flaw and it is not indecision. It is the shape of a senior leader’s seat. There is almost nowhere to say the thing out loud; not to the board, not to your staff, often not at home. So it circles instead, and circling is exhausting in a way that is hard to explain to anyone who has not done it.

This is a place to say it out loud once, to someone who is not in your organization, does not know your board, and has nothing at stake in what you decide.

What happens in the thirty minutes

You talk. I ask questions. By the end, we’ll both know whether there is work here, and if so, what kind.
I won’t hand you a plan in half an hour, and you should be skeptical of anyone who offers to.

There is nothing to prepare, and I would rather you didn’t. I would rather hear it the way you would say it at the end of a long day than the way you would present it to a board. You have done enough presenting this week.

If there is work here, I’ll tell you what I’d suggest, what it involves, and what it costs, before we hang up. You don’t have to decide on the call. Take it home, sleep on it, talk to whoever you need to. And if what you need is a different kind of help, or a different person, I’ll tell you that too, and try to point you toward who it is. I’d rather say that in thirty minutes than in three months.

If you would like to write first

Some people want to put it in writing before they say it to a person. That is often easier, and it is completely fine.

Tell me three things: what your role is, roughly what is happening, and what made this the week you finally looked.

The third one usually matters most.

What you tell me stays with me

That holds before an engagement exists exactly as it holds during one. Nothing you say in a first conversation goes anywhere, whether or not we ever work together.

I have written out precisely what confidentiality means in my practice: what I record, what I keep, how long, and what happens when someone else is paying, rather than asking you to take it on faith. Read it here →