By Andreas Pettersson, Founder, Leaders ADAPT
Most owners I talk to have one decision they have been carrying for a quarter. Whether to take the loan. Whether to rebuild the software or patch it again. Whether the operations lead they promoted can run the company for a month without them. They do not need a CFO for a year. They need one for two hours, with the right numbers on the table and a sheet of paper at the end that says what to do next.
That is the advisory session. It is the smallest paid thing Leaders ADAPT sells, and in my view it is the most honest first step in the whole bench. You find out what a senior executive is worth to your company before you commit to a monthly fee. We find out whether anyone inside the company can carry the work.
I have been on the buying side of this many times. As CEO at Arcules, which I built from zero to over 150 people and sold to Canon, and later as Canon's youngest standalone CEO, I bought outside advice in every shape there is. The sessions that paid off were the ones with a written question going in and a written answer coming out. The ones that wasted my money were pleasant conversations with smart people.
An advisory session is a fixed price, two to three hour working session with a sitting CFO, CTO or COO on one decision, prepared in advance and closed with a short written view: the recommendation, the reasoning, the risks and the next three steps with dates.
Quick answer: An advisory session is a two to three hour working session with a sitting CFO, CTO or COO on one decision. You send the question and the numbers a few days ahead. The session is spent on the decision, and you leave with a one to two page written view and dated next steps. At Leaders ADAPT it is a fixed price, quoted after a free first call.
Leaders ADAPT sells advisory sessions from its own bench at a fixed price, quoted after the first call. The research quoted on this page comes from McKinsey and Harvard Business Review, each linked with the month I read it. If their page has changed, their page wins. None of the sources pays us or knows we cite them.
What an advisory session is, and what it is not
Three things make it a session and not a meeting.
One decision. Not "look at the business". A real choice with at least two options, a deadline and a cost of getting it wrong. The narrower the question, the better the two hours.
A sitting executive. Someone who holds or has held the CFO, CTO or COO seat and has made this kind of call with their own name on it. Not a generalist consultant, and not me pretending to be your CFO. I run the first call and I am in the session, but the person across the table is the one who has done the job.
A written output. If nothing is written down, the session was a conversation. The paper is the product.
It is not a free consultation, which is a sales call about whether two people should work together. It is not a workshop, which builds alignment across a team and needs a day. It is not a retainer, which carries a recurring problem week after week. If you are weighing the shapes against each other, the fractional vs interim vs advisory comparison draws the lines, and the fractional executive services hub shows how all three run through the bench.
Why fixed price? Because a meter changes behavior. When an owner pays by the hour, he trims the problem to fit the budget and brings the cheap version of the question. A fixed price takes the clock out of the room. I made the longer argument about pay shapes in how to pay an advisor, so I will not repeat it here.
Before the session: the sentence, the pack and the decider
The two hours are only as good as the three days before them. Here is what we ask for.
The sentence. One line that starts with "Should we". Should we take the bank's term sheet. Should we move off the custom platform before the next hire. Should we split the operations role into two. If you cannot write the sentence, that is the first finding, and the free call is where we write it together.
Your answer today. Write down what you would decide if you had to decide this afternoon, and why. Owners resist this. It feels like homework. It is the most useful page in the pack, because the session then tests a position instead of starting from nothing.
The pack. Whatever bears on the decision, in whatever state it is in. For a CFO session, the last twelve months of financials, the cash position and the term sheet. For a CTO session, a sketch of the systems, the vendor contracts and the incident log. For a COO session, the org chart, the meeting calendar and the last three things that went wrong. It arrives at least three working days ahead. The executive reads it before the session, not during it.
The decider. Who makes the final call, and who else needs to be in the room. Bob Frisch and Cary Greene argue in Harvard Business Review that a team should agree in advance how a decision will be made if consensus fails: who is accountable, and whether a view is binding or advisory (HBR, March 2019). We take the same line. In a session the advisor recommends and the owner decides, and we say that out loud at the start.
On our side, the executive sends back two or three questions before the session. Those questions tell you a lot. If they are about the numbers, the problem is probably the one you named. If they are about people, it usually is not.
Inside the two hours
The session has a shape. It flexes, but it rarely changes much.
The first fifteen minutes: read and restate. Everyone in the room reads the one page summary in silence, then the executive restates the decision in their own words. Rae Ringel suggests in Harvard Business Review that a meeting can open with five to 20 minutes of silent reading of a prepared document (HBR, October 2022). It means nobody spends the first hour catching up.
The next forty five minutes: the options. Usually three. The one you favor, the one you have been avoiding, and the one nobody has said out loud yet. Each gets tested against the pack: what it costs, what it needs from the team, what it does to cash or capacity or risk over the next twelve months.
Thirty minutes: the premortem. We take the leading option and assume it has failed a year from now. Harvard Business Review calls this the project premortem, where the team imagines the failure first and lists the reasons, so the plan can be improved rather than autopsied (HBR, September 2007). It is also where the advisor earns the fee, because a sitting executive has seen the specific ways this kind of plan fails.
The last thirty minutes: decide and write. The owner makes the call, or names exactly what is missing to make it. Then we draft the written view in the room, together, while the reasoning is fresh. The executive finishes it afterwards.
Two rules hold the whole thing together. No phones. And the advisor says what they think, including the thing the owner will not like. That second rule is the reason owners pay for an outside executive rather than ask their own team, who have to work for them on Monday.
What you leave with: the written view
The written view arrives within two working days. One to two pages. It has six parts:
- The decision, in the sentence you wrote.
- The options that were tested, one paragraph each.
- The recommendation and the reasoning behind it.
- The risks from the premortem that you agreed to watch, and the signal that tells you each one is happening.
- The next three steps, each with an owner and a date.
- What would change the recommendation, so you know when to come back.
The test for the document is simple. Someone who was not in the room should be able to act on it. Your controller, your head of engineering, your operations lead. If they cannot, it is not finished.
Why insist on paper? McKinsey surveyed 1,259 managers and found that only 20 percent said their organizations excel at decision making. The same managers spent an average of 37 percent of their time making decisions, and 61 percent said most of that time was used ineffectively (McKinsey, April 2019). Most of that waste is decisions made twice, because nobody wrote down the first one or why it was made.
Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony make a related point in Harvard Business Review. They cite a McKinsey study of more than 1,000 business investments in which companies that worked to reduce bias in their decisions raised their returns on investment by seven percentage points (HBR, June 2011). A written view with the options and the reasoning on one page is a modest version of that discipline. It makes the bias visible, because the reasoning is there to be argued with.
Which seat: a CFO, a CTO or a COO session
Pick the seat that owns the decision. Here is how the three differ in practice.
| CFO session | CTO session | COO session | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical decisions | Loan or line of credit, a pricing change, a second location, the first buyer request | Rebuild or patch, a vendor contract, data and AI, a security gap, the first senior engineering hire | Splitting a role, a handoff that keeps failing, capacity before a big contract, the meeting rhythm |
| What the pack holds | Twelve months of financials, cash, the term sheet or offer | A systems sketch, contracts, the incident log, the roadmap | The org chart, the calendar, the last three failures |
| Who usually attends | Owner and controller | Owner and the most senior technical person | Owner and the operations lead |
| What the written view adds | A cash view with the scenarios that matter | A sequenced build or buy plan with the risks | A redrawn handoff or role with owners and dates |
| Our weekly version | CFO advisory | CTO advisor | COO advisor |
Some decisions need two seats. A pricing change that depends on a new billing system is a CFO and CTO question at once. We can run a joint session, but only when the decision really needs both. Two executives on a one seat question means one of them is watching the other.
The COO session is the one owners resist and need most. It is where the two reasons people call me show up in the open: they hate one on ones, and the work they delegate keeps coming back. Ron Carucci argues in Harvard Business Review that senior leaders should replace many operational one on ones with small cross functional meetings that reflect how the work actually gets done (HBR, July 2025). A COO session often ends with exactly that kind of redrawn rhythm, written down with names.
Where AI fits in an advisory session
AI has made the session better in two places. It has not made it smaller.
The pack. An owner or controller with an AI assistant can now assemble the pack in an afternoon. Pull the twelve months, summarize the vendor contracts, list the incidents by cause. That means the executive reads a clean pack and the two hours go to judgment, not to finding numbers. If your company runs an EOS style rhythm, our AI for EOS companies guide shows where this kind of preparation fits in the quarter.
The options. Scenario work that took a week can be run during the session. "What if the biggest customer leaves" gets answered in the room, with the owner watching the numbers move.
What it should not do is the deciding. Whether to take the loan, which system to retire, who runs operations while you are away. Those calls depend on things that are not in the data: what you want, what your team can carry, what you are willing to lose. Our page on what not to delegate to AI makes the longer case. A useful rule for the session: the machine can draft the options, the executive can test them, and only the owner signs the written view.
Harvard Business Review reported that executives now spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s, citing research by Steven Rogelberg and colleagues (Leslie Perlow, Constance Noonan Hadley and Eunice Eun, HBR, July 2017). AI can shorten a lot of those meetings. A two hour session on a decision that has been open for a quarter is not one of them.
What an advisory session does not fix
I say these on the first call, because a session sold for the wrong problem is a bad session.
It does not fix a problem that recurs every week. If cash is tight every month and nobody knows why, a single session will name the cause and then the cause will come back. That is weekly advisory or a fractional seat, and the written view will say so.
It does not fix an empty seat. If nobody inside the company can carry the three next steps, the paper sits in a drawer. The session is built for owners who have someone to hand it to.
It does not fix a leadership team that cannot decide without the owner. A session can produce a clear recommendation and the team can still wait for you to say go. That is the work of leadership team development, which is where most of my own hours go, and it takes months, not hours.
It does not fix wrong data. If the books do not close or nobody knows what systems the company runs, the first job is a controller or an inventory, not an advisor. We will tell you before you pay for the session, not after.
And it does not make the decision for you. Some owners want to be told what to do. The executive will tell you what they would do, and why, plainly. You still sign it.
Who is on the bench for this
Steve Shaw runs the CFO sessions. Steve has twenty years in finance leadership and works with owners on clean books, cash discipline, financial positioning before a sale, and the numbers conversation with buyers and lenders. His sessions end with a cash view and a recommendation, not a stack of slides.
Sergey Dmitriev runs the CTO sessions. Sergey is the fractional CTO and AI systems partner on the bench. He builds and runs the AI and data work Leaders ADAPT delivers, including digital twin and company knowledge systems, and trains leadership teams on AI tools with me. When the question is rebuild or patch, or where AI should sit in the company, Sergey is the one reading your systems sketch.
Chris Geddes and Marina St. Cyr run the COO sessions. Chris is an operator who pairs operations leadership with AI transformation work in owner led companies, so he takes the sessions where the operating fix and the technology fix are the same fix. Marina leads operations for owner led companies, is detail strong, and runs the cadence and the follow through. She takes the sessions where the problem is handoffs, rhythm and the work that keeps coming back.
Every session runs through Leaders ADAPT. I take the first call, write the sentence with you, match the executive, and sit in the session. The seats and the shapes are described on the Fractional Executives and Advisory page.
Advisory Session FAQ
What is an advisory session?
An advisory session is a scoped, fixed price working session of two to three hours with a sitting executive, such as a CFO, CTO or COO, on one decision the owner has to make. The question and the numbers arrive a few days before. The session is spent on the decision itself, and the owner leaves with a short written view, the next steps in order and the dates they are due.
How long is an advisory session?
Two to three hours is the shape that works. Under two hours there is not enough time to test the options against the real numbers and still write the view down. Past three hours the energy drops and the session turns into a workshop. If the problem needs a full day, it is probably a planning offsite or a diligence read rather than a single decision.
How should I prepare for an advisory session?
Write the decision in one sentence, starting with the word should. Send the numbers, documents or system diagrams that bear on it at least three working days ahead, in whatever state they are in. Name who else needs to be in the room and who makes the final call. Then write down the answer you would give today, so the session has something to test.
What do I get at the end of an advisory session?
A written view of one to two pages, sent within two working days. It states the question, the options that were tested, the recommendation and the reasoning, the risks you agreed to watch, and the next three steps with an owner and a date for each. It is written so that someone who was not in the room can act on it.
How much does an advisory session cost?
At Leaders ADAPT an advisory session is a fixed price, quoted after a free first call once the question and the seat are clear. There is no meter running in the room, so you can bring the real problem rather than the cheap version of it. Market rates for advisor hours vary widely, and our page on how to pay an advisor lists sourced figures.
Should my advisory session be with a CFO, a CTO or a COO?
Pick the seat that owns the decision. Cash, pricing, loans and the numbers a buyer will test belong with a CFO. A platform rebuild, a vendor contract, data or AI belong with a CTO. Capacity, handoffs, the meeting rhythm and the hire you keep postponing belong with a COO. If you cannot tell, the free first call decides it.
What happens after an advisory session?
Three things are possible. The written view is enough and you carry it out yourself, which is a good outcome. The problem turns out to recur, and weekly advisory with the same executive becomes the next step. Or the session shows that the seat needs someone inside the company for days a week, which is a fractional engagement. We say which one in the written view.
Is an advisory session the same as a free consultation?
No. A free consultation is a sales conversation about whether two people should work together. An advisory session is paid work on one decision, with preparation, an executive who has read your numbers, and a written output you keep. At Leaders ADAPT the free step is the first call with me and the online assessments. The session is what comes after.
Bring the decision, not the whole company
The owners who get the most from an advisory session arrive with one decision and leave with one page. The ones who get the least arrive wanting someone to look at everything. Looking at everything is a fractional engagement or an exit readiness read. Two hours is for one choice, made well and written down.
Tomorrow morning, write the sentence. Should we, then the decision. Under it, write what you would decide today. If both lines come easily, you are ready for a session. If neither does, the first call is where we find them.
What the first conversation looks like
A 30 minute call with me. You bring the decision you have been carrying, even half formed. I help you turn it into one sentence, tell you which seat owns it, and whether a session is the right shape or whether the problem recurs and needs weekly advisory or a fractional seat. If the honest answer is that you need a bookkeeper or a systems inventory first, I say so.
If we go ahead, you get a short list of what to put in the pack, a date for the session with Steve, Sergey, Chris or Marina, and a fixed price quoted on that call. The written view lands within two working days of the session.
Your step for tomorrow morning: take the free assessments so I can see how much of the company runs through you, then book a fit conversation. One decision, two hours, one page.
