Hire Executive Advisor — counsel for the leadership team

A board member has fiduciary duties and votes; an advisor has neither — which means freer, more frequent, and more candid engagement. Advisors complement boards; they do not substitute for governance.

They listen to usefulness. An advisor who does the homework, understands the business, and gives counsel that proves right earns attention fast. One who recites frameworks does not — which is why immersion matters more than credentials.

By defining the lane upfront: what topics, what access, what authority (none, beyond influence). Good advisors welcome other sharp minds; the problems start with overlapping vague mandates, which we prevent by writing them down.

Completely. What is discussed in advisory sessions stays there — including from the board, unless you choose otherwise. Candour requires safety, and safety requires explicit confidentiality.

Typically a monthly retainer reflecting access and seniority — far below any executive hire, structured for the long term. The economics work because the value compounds: an advisor who knows your history advises better every quarter.

Most engagements I run last six to eighteen months, reviewed every quarter. The first ninety days are the most intense - immersion, mapping the real decisions, building the thesis - after which we settle into a fortnightly rhythm. I'm wary of open-ended retainers that outlive their usefulness, so we agree upfront what would signal the engagement should deepen, pause or end. If I'm not earning the fee in a given quarter, I'll be the first to say so.

Yes. I'm based in Dubai and advise leadership teams across the UAE, US, UK, Canada, Pakistan and Malaysia, so I'm already built around async work and overlapping time windows. The fortnightly sessions run on video; the decision log, document reviews and Loom walkthroughs happen asynchronously, so progress never waits for a shared nine-to-five. For a board offsite or a critical strategy session, I travel. Distance has never been the constraint - candour and access are.

A consultancy sells you a team, a deck and a methodology, then leaves. When you hire an executive advisor you get one experienced person who stays accountable, knows your context month after month, and has no junior analysts to staff or follow-on project to sell. I won't hand you a sixty-slide strategy you then implement alone. I help you make the specific decisions in front of you and live with the consequences alongside you.

Both, and I keep them separate on purpose. As an executive advisor my value is independence - counsel, not delivery. But because I'm also a hands-on fractional CTO and solutions architect, I can drop into the technical detail when a decision demands it: reviewing an architecture, sizing a re-platform, or sitting in on a vendor negotiation. If an engagement needs sustained build work, we scope that explicitly rather than letting advisory quietly turn into unpaid delivery.

We can usually start within two weeks. I prefer to open with a paid scoping period - a few sessions and a document review - rather than a long contract, so we both find out whether the fit is real before committing to a retainer. By the end of it you'll have my written first-read on the business and the decisions ahead. If it isn't adding value, we stop there, no obligation.

I resist vanity metrics, but advisory shouldn't be unaccountable. I measure it by the decision log - are major decisions getting made on time instead of drifting - and by the quarterly thesis, where I put my view of the biggest risk in writing so you can hold me to it. The honest test is simple: a year in, were the calls you made with an executive advisor in the room better than the ones you'd have made without one?