An hour at the board

Could you go away for two weeks and not be phoned?

Most owners answer that with a pause and then a qualification. The pause is the answer. If it is yours, an hour at the board is free and there is no pitch at the end of it.

Book the hour

One hour, no charge, nothing to prepare.

The problem

Every hard call stops with you.

You built it, and the difficult decisions get made at eleven at night or they do not get made at all. Not because you cannot make them, but because there is nobody at your level to test them against first.

Everyone you would talk to about it works for you. However good they are, they cannot be neutral about a decision that affects their own job. So the thought stays in your head, unfinished, and comes back the following week in exactly the same shape.

That is not a failure of nerve and it is not a problem with your people. It is what owning something is like.

What owners bring

You probably already know which one it is.

Most owners I sit with have one thing they have been carrying for months.

The senior hire that would take you out of delivery, and keeps not being made
Somebody who has the title but not the authority, and has noticed
A business that could not run for a fortnight without you in it
Growth that has flattened with no clear reason in the numbers
A partner or long serving colleague the firm has grown past
Whether you want to be doing this in six years

If yours is not on that list it still counts. The list is only here to show you that you are not unusual.

Book the hour

The hour

Your thinking, out of your head, onto the board, into a solution.

You bring whatever is actually live. It goes up on the board, all of it, including the parts you have not said out loud to anybody. Then we work it through together until it is settled.

It is not advice and it is not consulting. I do not arrive with your answer, because most of it is already in your head in pieces. What is missing is a surface to put it on and somebody with no stake in which way you go.

Nothing to prepare. Bring the thing you would be turning over on the drive home anyway.

The thing that is not working

It agrees with everything.

Most owners have tried working this through with an AI at midnight. It is genuinely useful, right up to the point you notice it agrees with whatever you put into it. Which is the same problem you have during the day, in a building full of people who work for you.

A thinking partner is somebody who can afford to tell you that you are wrong. That is the whole job.

How it runs

In person, at a real board, in central London or Milton Keynes.
Or on a call wherever you are, with the board shared live on screen. The board travels, the work does not change.
One hour. No charge, and no pitch at the end of it.

Who I am

John Obidipe

Fifteen years across organisational consulting and executive coaching. Gallup certified in CliftonStrengths and a FITT16 practitioner. I have worked with leaders inside Toyota, Convatec and the University of Oxford, and with owners running firms between one and five million.

"

What can I say about the work John has done with us today at Arrow Planning. He's just delivered a fantastic coaching session with the team. We've been working through some genuinely difficult subjects, and he's presented them in a way that's allowed everybody to engage properly with these difficult matters.

It takes a real weight off my shoulders. The pressure and expectation isn't solely on me. I'm not standing there having to find a way through these problems alone. John leads me through them, then comes in and helps me actually activate them within the team, creating solutions that set the standard for the future.

Thanks, John.

Mark Schmull MD, Arrow Planning

The form

Put an hour in the diary.

Three questions, and then I will come back with some times.

I read every one myself.

Got it. I'll come back with some times within one working day.