Key takeaways
- The work starts by separating two things that look identical from the inside: a defect in the business system, and a decision the owner keeps postponing.
- Fixing decision rights is unglamorous work, and it changes the owner's calendar inside a quarter.
What a business management consultant actually changes
Most owners call because revenue flattened, a senior hire did not work out, or the week has stopped fitting into the week. The work opens by separating two things that look identical from the inside: a defect in the business system, and a decision the owner keeps postponing. It starts with a free call. Then the Bottleneck Diagnostic, a fixed piece of work at $1,500 that answers that question in writing. It takes two to three weeks and involves structured interviews with the owner and the leadership group, plus a walk through how work and approvals actually move between desks.
The report names the binding constraint, estimates what it costs per month, and gives the sequence for removing it. If the finding sits outside what we fix, we say so and you keep the report.
At this size the constraint is most often a decision-rights problem. Nobody below the owner can commit money, hire, or tell a customer no, so every thread returns to one desk and the company runs at the speed of that desk's attention. Fixing it means writing down who decides what, up to what amount, and what happens when they get it wrong. That is unglamorous work, and it changes the owner's calendar inside a quarter.
How management consulting is scoped here
The sequence is the same for every company between $500k and $50M.
- A free call, about thirty minutes, where we decide together whether this is worth pursuing
- The Bottleneck Diagnostic, $1,500, fixed, with a written finding
- Then whichever piece of work the diagnostic points at — a 90-day advisory, a sales rebuild, or leadership team alignment — scoped and priced from what it found
Scope is fixed in writing before the work starts, so there is no hourly meter and no change order halfway through. Billing by the day or by the hour leaves the client carrying the risk of an engagement that keeps extending itself, and fixing the scope moves that risk onto us.
Advisory work runs in 90-day blocks, each with one defined outcome rather than an open retainer. Most owners meet with us every second week. We do not embed full time and we do not run the company for you. You keep every artefact, including the decision log, the org map and the operating cadence, so the work still functions after we leave.