What happens in the business.
This is business coaching for boards, leadership teams, and ownership groups. The mechanics are different from individual coaching in five places: the first conversation, the conflict check, the cadence, the deliverables, and the close.
Each is described below. None of them are theoretical.
Sixty to ninety minutes. With the principals who can act.
The first conversation is not a discovery call and not a pitch. It confirms or reassigns scope. The principals who can act on the decision are in the room. Stan works through the situation, names the structural question underneath, and proposes the engagement shape.
By the end, two things are true: either the engagement is scoped in writing, or the conversation has surfaced why a different structure would serve you better. Both outcomes are useful. Neither is a sales conversation.
A board member, two principals, and Stan. Sixty minutes. The structural question gets named. The business sees it together. The engagement is scoped or redirected by the end of the call.Formal. Before every engagement begins.
Before any Scoped Board or Ownership Work engagement starts, Stan runs a formal conflict check against active and recent engagements, the network of operating ventures, and disclosed competitive overlaps. The check happens in writing and is shared with the business.
If a conflict surfaces, the engagement does not begin. If a partial conflict surfaces, the scope is narrowed in writing to remove the overlap, or the engagement is declined. Confidentiality protocols are explicit. No information from one engagement reaches another. Ever.
The conflict check is the structural reason multi-principal work can hold Stan's judgment. Without it, the work is not safe to do at the principal level. With it, the work is what the business needs.In the team's actual meeting. No parallel coaching.
Scoped Board or Ownership Work is not a series of one-on-one calls behind the scenes. The work happens in the business where decisions actually get made. Board meetings, founding-team sessions, ownership-group conversations, transition working sessions.
No parallel coaching. No private side channels. No backchannel coaching on individual principals. The structural business problem lands under consideration the same way for everyone, in the business where the decision belongs. That is the point.
Cadence is every two to four weeks, sustained across two to six months scoped against the transition. In person where geography allows; video where it does not. Travel is included in the engagement scope, billed at cost.
If the work needs to be done one principal at a time, that is Ongoing Coaching territory. Scoped Board or Ownership Work is the business.No extra deck unless the sponsor asks.
Default Scoped Board or Ownership Work produces a transition memo at close (review by the board, the principals, and the legal counsel). No deck, no recommendation playbook. The call and the written transition memo are the value; the business is where it lands.
Sponsors occasionally request a written summary for a non-attending stakeholder (an absent board member, an LP, a future principal joining mid-engagement). When requested, the summary is short, scoped to what the business agreed to share, and reviewed by the principals before it leaves the business.
Recordings of conversations are never made. Slack channels and shared docs are never created. The engagement runs on the cadence of meetings and direct communication.
Closes on closure. Not on calendar.
Scoped Board or Ownership Work engagements close when the transition closes. Not when a calendar runs out. If the work is scoped at four months and the structural decision closes in three, the engagement closes at three. If the transition takes six instead of four because of a regulatory window or a leadership change mid-engagement, the engagement extends.
The fee structure is set against the scope, not against billable hours. Extensions are written into the original scope as a contingency, not negotiated mid-engagement under pressure.
Most Scoped Board or Ownership Work engagements close cleanly inside the original scope. A small number extend by one month. A smaller number close early. None drag.
If the decision belongs to the group, the application begins in writing.
Request scoped quote Personal reply within 48 hours · Conflict check before every engagementRoute map
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