What this engagement actually is
A Strategy & Advisory engagement is a senior thought partnership. We sit alongside the founder, CEO, board or executive team during a consequential moment: a new market, a funding round, a pivot, an exit, a hiring decision that will set the next two years.
We are not a generalist agency dressed up as strategy consultants. We work at the level of "what should we do, and what should we say no to", with the discipline to write it down and the courage to argue our position.
What you get
Six specific deliverables. Not promises, outputs.
- A written strategic brief, 5 to 10 pages, that the board can act on
- A decision tree for the next 90 days, with named owners
- A "what we are choosing not to do" list, with rationale
- A weekly working session for the duration of the engagement
- A risk register, kept current, with clear escalation triggers
- A final-week handover note so the work outlives the engagement
How long, how priced
Typical engagement: 6 to 12 weeks of senior partnership. Some engagements are a single intense fortnight; others run as a quarterly retainer alongside a board cycle.
Priced by project or fixed retainer, never by the hour. You know the cost on day one. If we run short, we hand the time back; if we run long, we absorb it. We are not incentivised to extend our stay.
Always senior-led. The person in the room with you is the person doing the analysis and the person presenting to your board. No junior hand-offs.
Best for
This service lands strongest with the following audiences. Click through for a sector-specific view.
Scale-ups
Sector view, including what an engagement here typically needs and how we run it.
See Scale-ups ›Established Businesses
Sector view, including what an engagement here typically needs and how we run it.
See Established Businesses ›Startups & Founders
Sector view, including what an engagement here typically needs and how we run it.
See Startups & Founders ›A typical engagement
What the first few weeks actually look like.
Week 1: Discover
A 30-minute call, then a half-day working session. We come away with a shared definition of the question we are actually answering, the constraints that bind it, and a one-page engagement scope. We will tell you if Strategy is not the right starting service.
Weeks 2 to 4: Design
Desk research, internal interviews, and three or four strategic options on the table by end of week 3. Week 4 narrows to a recommended path, with the trade-offs named. We test the recommendation against your worst-case before bringing it to your board.
Weeks 5 to end: Deliver
Board paper, decision tree, owner-assigned 90-day plan, risk register. Weekly working session through to the engagement end. On the last day, we hand over a written note that lets your team continue without us in the room.
Related services
Engagements rarely stay inside a single service line. These are the most common companions.
- Market Research & Insight: When strategy needs hard evidence underneath.
- Marketing, Branding & Comms: When strategic clarity needs to land externally.
- Operations & Performance: When strategy fails on execution.
Where the numbers need to be airtight
GIVE Analytics, one click away
When this service crosses into deep financial modelling, feasibility, or investment-grade analysis, we hand off cleanly to GIVE Analytics.
Visit GIVE AnalyticsFrequently asked questions
The questions buyers ask in their head before clicking "Book a Call". Answered plainly.
When is it actually worth bringing in a strategy adviser?
Usually before a decision you cannot easily reverse. Raising a Series A or B; selling the business; entering a new market; closing a division; pivoting the model after a quarter of flat numbers. The common thread: the cost of being wrong is high, and the people closest to it are too close to see it cleanly. If the question can be answered by a good FD or a long walk, you do not need us. If it would keep a sensible board chair awake, it probably warrants a structured conversation. The free 30-minute Discover call exists to sort one from the other honestly.
How is this different from a big-name consultancy?
Three differences that matter. First, one principal does the work. David Hickson runs every engagement personally; no associate pyramid, no rotating juniors learning on your problem. Second, we price the project, not the hours. You know the fee before we start, so we have no incentive to stretch the timeline. Third, we are senior peers, not vendors. Our job is to disagree with you when you are wrong, not to sell you the next phase. Big firms are excellent at large transformations with large teams. We are built for the founder or CEO who needs one trusted brain in the room.
How do you scope the work, and what do I receive?
The Discover call clarifies the decision in front of you, the deadline, and who needs to be convinced. We then send a one-page proposal: scope, timeline (typically 6 to 12 weeks), fixed fee, and named deliverables. Deliverables vary by engagement, but usually include a written strategy document, a board-ready narrative, a decision framework with the two or three real options costed and stress-tested, and direct working sessions with you and your team. If the decision needs deep financial modelling, our sister firm GIVE Analytics handles that strand. Nothing is billed hourly. Nothing is open-ended.
How do we avoid paying for a deck that sits on a shelf?
By scoping around a decision, not a topic. Every engagement names the choice being made and the date it needs to be made by. The output is whatever genuinely moves that decision forward: often a short written paper and a board session, sometimes a model, sometimes a difficult one-to-one with a co-founder. We do not produce 80-slide decks for their own sake. If the work can be done in 40 pages it will be; if it needs 12, even better. You are buying a conclusion you can act on, with the reasoning visible behind it.
What if our board disagrees with the recommendation?
Good. That is often the most valuable part of the process. Our recommendations are written to be challenged: the assumptions are explicit, the alternatives are costed, and the reasoning is on the page rather than in our heads. If your board pushes back, we either defend the position with evidence, or we update it. We will also attend the board meeting if that helps. What we will not do is soften a view because it is uncomfortable. You are paying for an honest senior read, not for validation; a board that argues with the paper is using it correctly.
What happens once the engagement finishes?
Three options, and you choose. Some clients take the work, execute it themselves, and we are done; that is a perfectly good outcome. Others move onto a quarterly retainer: a standing call, board-paper review, and a senior ear available between meetings when something awkward lands. A third group comes back six or twelve months later for the next consequential decision, which we prefer to a vague ongoing arrangement. We do not chase add-on work and we do not embed. If you do not need us after the project ends, you should not be paying us.
Confidentiality and IP
Standard NDA available on request, before any sensitive material changes hands. Your data, your plans, and your identity remain your property. All deliverables produced during the engagement are assigned to you on completion. We describe our work, when we describe it at all, by what was solved, not by who we solved it for.
Next step
A 30-minute conversation, free and confidential. We talk through your context, what you want to be true 90 days from now, and whether a strategy & advisory engagement is the right starting point. If it is not, we will say so.