We help boards decide while the evidence is still incomplete
And leave a record that survives the audit. We work with boards and executive committees in energy, health systems, financial services and public infrastructure.
The deliverable
We produce one thing: a written record of how a decision was reached, and what it rested on.
Three pieces of work, and you can stop after any of them
Most clients start with framing and stop there for a while. Some arrive with the evidence already gathered and need only the handover.
All services
Narrow the question to one the board can answer
Most board questions are three questions wearing one coat. We separate them and write down the one the board is actually being asked to vote on. Then we name the evidence that would change the answer, so you know what you are waiting for and what you can stop waiting for.
Decision framingGather the evidence, then mark where it runs out
We collect what is known and check it against its source. We record how confident each piece is and why. Then we write down what cannot be known before the decision date. A board that knows the shape of its own uncertainty votes differently from one that does not.
Evidence reviewForty minutes in the session, and the board has the whole argument
The document carries the alternatives we set aside and the reason we set them aside. Then we sit in the session and answer for it. Most strategy work does not fail in the analysis. It fails in the handover.
Board handover
A record has four parts, and the fourth is the one that gets skipped.
01
What was known on the day of the vote.
02
What was not known, and whether it could have been.
03
Which alternatives were considered, including the ones dropped early and never written up.
04
Why this one was chosen over those.
Most board material carries the first part well, the second and third badly, and the fourth not at all.
How we work
Four facts we repeat on the first call
These are the terms of the work. They are the reason some boards hire us, and the reason others decide we are the wrong firm. Both outcomes are useful on a first call.
01
Two of the four on every file, and one of them a partner
Two people carry the file from the first call to the board session, and one of them is always a partner. No juniors on the analysis. One person’s judgement is not a method.
02
Eight to twelve weeks for a full cycle
The cycle runs from framing through evidence to handover. We have run it faster and the record came out thinner. If the vote date is near, say so on the first call and we will tell you which part is still worth doing.
03
Every recommendation carries a section on what would make it wrong
It sits near the front, in plain language, with the names of the two people who wrote it. Mireille Osei sat on an energy regulator’s appeal panel for four years. That is the section she looked for first. It also makes a board argue properly before the vote rather than after it.
04
The material stays with you, in editable form
Working files, sources, and the reasoning, in formats your own people can open and change. Not a locked PDF. Two years from now the record has to be yours, because by then the regulator asks you, not us.
Three files, and the clients stay unnamed
Clients are not named and identifying figures are changed. The shape of the problem is accurate. So is what the record had to do, and how it held when someone came back to it.
The regulator wanted the reasoning, not the result
A regulator reopened a tariff decision 19 months after the vote. It did not dispute the number. It asked how the board reached it, which alternatives sat on the table, and what the board knew about demand at the time. The file answered in writing, with dates and sources. Nobody had to reconstruct the reasoning from memory.
The evidence arrived after the vote
A hospital network had to commit to equipment before the clinical evidence was complete. The decision named the findings that would reopen it, and the person who would watch for them. We wrote both before the vote. The evidence arrived late, as expected. The board reopened the decision on its own schedule rather than under pressure.
Two committees read the same data and reached opposite conclusions
A bank was deciding whether to leave a segment. Risk and strategy reached opposite conclusions from one dataset. We put both readings in a single document, side by side, and isolated the assumption that separated them. The board then voted on the assumption rather than on the committee.
“The regulator asked for our reasoning. We had it in writing, and it was dated.”
112
Files in the archive
2019
The first one
9
Sector regulators
4
People in the firm
The archive
112 files, and Anders Vik can tell you what the 2019 ones said
112 files between 2019 and 2026, across 9 sector regulators. Anders Vik keeps the archive, and it has been cited in cases. An archive nobody cites is storage. We read our own old files before we start a new one, and we tell you when one of them went wrong.
Four people, and two of them on your file
Two of the four write your document, and a partner is always one of them. Which two depends on the sector, and you will meet all four at some point.
Mireille Osei
Partner, energy and utilities
She has read board decisions from the appeal panel side of the table. That is where she learned what a record has to contain.
Tomas Reinholt
Partner, health systems
Built clinical trial protocols before Plenary. He writes the sections on what is not yet known, and he is strict about the difference between no evidence and weak evidence.
Nadia Fournier
Principal, financial services
Writes most of the firm’s method. If one of our documents reads plainly, that is usually her doing.
Anders Vik
Principal, public infrastructure
Keeps the decision archive, the one cited in cases. Ask him for a file and he will hand you the alternatives the board turned down with it.
How we write for the person who will disagree
We publish the method as we work it out. Two of the pieces people come back to:
What a board actually reads
One insurer’s board asked for eight pages, and that changed the analysis. A board member reads them at the kitchen table the night before. Everything else in the pack is evidence for a claim in those eight pages, or it does not belong in the pack.
How to say what you do not know
Uncertainty written as a hedge reads as weakness. Written as a condition, with a trigger and a date, it reads as control. The difference is one sentence: name the trigger, and name the date it fires.
Before the first call
Five questions, and the one where the answer is no
Can you do this before our next board meeting?
No, not a full cycle: it takes 8 to 12 weeks. Framing, often yes. If the date is fixed and near, we do the framing and tell you which evidence is worth gathering at all.
Will you tell us what to decide?
Yes, with a recommendation and the section that says what would make it wrong. The vote stays yours, and the record shows that it was.
Who actually does the work?
Two of the four people in the firm, and never without a partner. Partners cover energy and health systems. Principals cover financial services and public infrastructure.
What happens if a regulator comes back years later?
You still hold the file, in editable form, with dates and sources. Our archive goes back to 2019, so we can show you how the same question was answered then.
Do we get slides?
You get a written document, and a version written for a forty minute board session. If another audience needs slides, we build them from the document, and the document stays the source.
Two lines in the first email are enough
Write to us with the question in front of the board and the date of the vote. All four of us see what arrives, and the one who covers your sector replies, because that is the person who would carry the file. On the first call we will say which of the three pieces you need, and whether the date allows it. Sometimes the answer is that you do not need us. Two of us are on that call, and one is a partner.