What we work on.

Strategic decision support

A single high-stakes call — entering a market, killing a product line, betting the budget on a bet. We sit alongside the team, frame the decision sharply, run the analysis, and stay until the call is made. Most engagements at this level discover, in the first week, that the question being asked isn't the question that matters. We surface that, rewrite it, and work the new one. The deliverable is a decision the executive owns, with the assumptions and uncertainties documented well enough that the team can defend it to a board, revisit it in six months, and learn from it whichever way it goes.

When you'd hire us for this

• A decision is on the agenda for the next board meeting and the analysis underneath it doesn't yet feel solid.
• The team is split, the data is ambiguous, and someone needs to break the tie without breaking the room.
• You're about to spend nine figures and want a second pair of eyes that isn't trying to sell you something.
• A bet was made; the conditions have changed; you need to decide whether to double down, hold, or walk.

Capital allocation & investment review

Comparing investments across a portfolio. We build the comparison the way a serious investor would — priors per opportunity, transparent assumptions, calibrated downside. The work isn't to produce a ranking. It's to produce a ranking everyone can argue with, on the assumptions that drive it. We routinely find that two-thirds of a capital plan rests on a handful of beliefs that nobody has actually written down. Once they're on the page, the conversation changes. Sometimes the ranking changes too. Sometimes it doesn't, and the team commits with more conviction than they had before — which is also a result.

When you'd hire us for this

• Annual planning is around the corner and last year's allocations are looking, in hindsight, a little arbitrary.
• You're a PE fund deciding between three add-ons for a portfolio company and the IC memo isn't converging.
• A new corporate development pipeline needs a prioritization framework that survives challenge.
• Your investment committee disagrees, and you suspect they're disagreeing about assumptions, not conclusions.

M&A and corporate development

Deal evaluation, integration risk, synergy stress-testing. We're the second opinion on the model the bankers gave you. The investment bank's job is to get the deal done; ours is to make sure the deal is the right one. We pressure-test the synergy assumptions, look hard at what the integration actually costs in management attention, and price the things the model treats as zero — execution risk, cultural mismatch, the strategic optionality you give up by tying the firm to this path. We work fast and we work confidentially, alongside corp dev and the CFO's office. If the deal is good, we'll say so. If it isn't, we'll show you why with numbers.

When you'd hire us for this

• An LOI is signed and you need an honest review of the synergy case before diligence gets emotional.
• Two acquisition targets, similar price tags, very different risk profiles, and the board wants a recommendation.
• A divestiture decision where the strategic case is clear but the financial case is messy.
• You're stress-testing a banker's model and want someone who's read enough of them to know where the bodies are.

Forecasting & planning

Replacing point forecasts with calibrated ranges. Quarterly planning that survives contact with reality. Sales, demand, capacity — wherever the current forecast keeps embarrassing the team. Most forecasting problems aren't statistical. They're organizational: the incentive to commit to a number is stronger than the incentive to be honest about what's knowable. We work with finance and operations to redesign the forecast so confidence is reported alongside the number, ranges are taken seriously, and the post-mortem after each cycle actually improves the next one. The teams we work with stop being embarrassed by their forecasts within two quarters, because the forecasts stop pretending to know things they can't.

When you'd hire us for this

• Your sales forecast has been wrong in the same direction for four quarters running and nobody is talking about it.
• Operating plan accuracy is being used as a performance metric and the gaming has gotten out of hand.
• A new market launch needs a demand estimate and you'd rather have a calibrated range than a confident number.
• Capacity planning decisions are being made on point forecasts and the cost of being wrong is asymmetric.

Decision quality audit

A structured look back at the last 12–24 months of major decisions. How calibrated was the team's confidence? Where did process fail? What changes for the next round? This is the engagement most leadership teams are quietly nervous about and find most useful. We don't grade outcomes — bad decisions can have good outcomes and the reverse is also true. We grade process, calibration, and the quality of disagreement. The output is a short, sharp report on what the team is systematically getting wrong, where the institutional priors are off, and what specifically to change before next year. It's the cheapest engagement we offer and frequently the highest-leverage.

When you'd hire us for this

• A new CEO or CFO wants a baseline read on how decisions actually get made before they change anything.
• The board has asked for an independent review of strategic decision-making after a bad year.
• A planning cycle is approaching and the team wants to know what to do differently this time.
• You suspect the team is consistently overconfident — or underconfident — and want it measured.

Advisory & training

Embedded advisory for leadership teams that want to build internal capability. Half-day workshops through ongoing executive coaching. The premise: most of what we do is teachable, and the teams that internalize it stop needing us for the routine calls. We run sessions for executive teams, boards, and investment committees on calibration, structured disagreement, and how to ask better questions before the analysis starts. Where it's useful, we stay on as a fractional decision-quality voice — sitting in on the big calls, reading the memos before they go to the board, telling the team when they're getting talked into something. It's the closest we get to having a long-term relationship with a client.

When you'd hire us for this

• An executive team that runs well but knows its decision-making could be sharper.
• A board that wants the directors trained in calibrated reasoning before the next strategy review.
• A growing investment team that needs a shared vocabulary for talking about uncertainty.
• A founder or operator who wants someone honest in the room when the big calls get made.
• A CFO building an internal FP&A function that takes calibration seriously.