Strategic advisory is one of those terms that gets used a lot and explained rarely. If you have been wondering what it actually involves, what it asks of you, and whether it might suit your business, this article answers those questions plainly.
The way I think about my own role is simple. I want to be the person you call before you decide, not after you have already committed. By the time a decision is made, the useful conversation has already happened.
In the Highlands, many serious business decisions are not only commercial. They often sit alongside infrastructure, public bodies, local confidence, community impact, funding routes, policy timing and long-term regional priorities. The practical realities are real too: distances are longer, communities are more dispersed, and a proposal that stalls with one stakeholder can be harder to revive elsewhere, because the business community here is small and closely connected. Understanding that wider, place-based context is part of what I bring to a conversation, alongside the day-to-day discipline of good advisory. It is also part of the thinking behind Growth for Good, where I treat business growth and community benefit as connected, not separate, goals.
No jargon. No pitch. Just a clear account of what advisory is, what it is not, and how to judge whether it is worth your time, including the parts of the work that are specific to the Highlands and the parts that touch policy and public bodies.
The short answer: what a strategic adviser actually does
An adviser’s primary job is to help you think more clearly, not to think for you.
Most business owners are too close to their own problems to see them straight. That is not a criticism. It is the inevitable result of running something you care about deeply, day after day, with limited time and limited distance from the work. An adviser creates that distance.
The work happens in structured conversations, usually monthly, though the cadence varies by engagement. The adviser listens, asks questions, and reflects back what they are hearing. They bring experience from outside your business, which is precisely the point. If they already thought the way you think, they would not be much use.
Good advisory challenges assumptions. Not to be difficult, but because untested assumptions are where most business decisions go wrong. The adviser’s job is to surface them before they cost you.
The owner remains the decision-maker at all times. A good adviser does not tell you what to do. They help you reach conclusions you can trust and defend.
How advisory is different from consultancy
People often use the words adviser and consultant interchangeably. They are not the same thing.
A consultant is typically hired to deliver something specific: a report, a strategy document, a recommendation, a process review. The engagement has a defined beginning and end. The output is tangible. You pay for it and it is done.
Advisory is different. The output is not a document. It is better decisions over time. That requires an ongoing relationship, not a one-off project.
That is why advisory works best at the point of uncertainty, not after it has resolved. Once a decision is made, an adviser’s usefulness has already passed.
Advisory does not replace your judgment. It strengthens it. If you find yourself nodding along to everything your adviser says, something has gone wrong. A good advisory relationship involves disagreement, qualification, and revision. That friction is where the value is.
What a typical engagement looks like
Every engagement is different, but the shape is usually similar.
For many of the businesses I work with here, that shape also has to account for a public body, a piece of infrastructure, or a community stakeholder somewhere in the picture, which is part of why the wider context matters as much as the commercial detail.
It starts with a conversation. No agenda, no obligation. The purpose is to find out whether there is a genuine fit: whether the adviser understands the kind of problem you are dealing with, and whether you think you can work well together. If the fit is not there, it is better to know early.
If we decide to proceed, I usually spend the first proper session understanding the business in detail. What it does. Where it is trying to get to. What is working and what is not. What decisions are currently sitting unresolved. That session sets the foundation for everything that follows.
After that, we meet regularly, usually monthly, with a clear agenda set in advance. Between sessions, you act on what came out of our last conversation. When we next meet, we start from where that took you.
The engagement evolves as the business does. The questions that matter most at the start are rarely the same ones that matter six months in. There is no fixed script. The structure is consistent; the content follows the business.
When advisory touches policy, stakeholders or public bodies
Some of my advisory work sits closer to policy and public bodies than a typical business engagement, and it is worth being precise about what that means.
Sometimes a client asks me to take a meeting about a sensitive policy issue on their behalf, within a brief we have agreed beforehand. That is a defined, time-limited piece of preparation and representation of a specific point, not an open-ended mandate. Other times the work is testing the political water for a new proposal: understanding whether an idea is workable, who is likely to support it, and where the resistance will come from, before a client invests further in developing it.
Stakeholder and public-sector context matters more than most people expect, particularly in a Highlands and Scottish economic development setting. Knowing who is involved, what they need to see, and what has already been tried is often the difference between a proposal landing well and going nowhere.
The level of engagement depends entirely on the client. Some need a single conversation to sharpen their thinking. Others need sustained groundwork over several months. There is no fixed package; the level matches the need.
Before a sensitive conversation, I help clients prepare: what to say, what not to say, how to read the room, and what a realistic outcome actually looks like. The overall aim is to shape a proposal so it is well prepared and clearly framed before it goes to a wider audience. That is judgement and preparation, not access.
I want to be clear about what this is not. It is not lobbying, not access-selling, and not political representation. I do not offer or guarantee access to, influence over, or outcomes from any decision-maker, and I do not speak on their behalf. Where formal rules apply to this kind of work, they must be followed. What I offer instead is judgement, preparation, context, engagement and the careful testing of a proposal.
This part of my work draws on public service experience and an understanding of how decisions get made in Scotland, not on party allegiance.
What a business needs to have in place before advisory makes sense
Advisory is not right for every business at every stage. There are some conditions that make it work, and some that make it unlikely to.
It works best when there is a genuine decision to make. Not a decision that has already been made and needs validation. If you already know what you are going to do and want someone to tell you it is a good idea, advisory is not what you need. You need a sounding board, which is a different thing.
It works at moments of real uncertainty: growth, transition, succession, a market shifting under your feet, a decision with consequences you cannot fully see. Those are the moments where an outside perspective earns its keep.
It requires a willingness to be challenged. If you find it uncomfortable when your thinking is questioned, advisory will be a frustrating experience for both sides. The willingness to sit with a difficult question rather than rush to an answer is what makes it productive.
It is not crisis management. Advisory works alongside a functioning business, not instead of one. If what you need is operational support, whether that is a finance director, an HR lead, or a sales manager, advisory is not a substitute. It is a complement to good operational foundations, not a replacement for them.
What it costs, in time as well as money
The financial cost of advisory varies by engagement, and it is something worth discussing directly rather than generalising here.
What I will say is this: the time cost is real, and it matters.
Advisory only works if you turn up prepared. That means thinking about what you want to get out of each session before it happens, not walking in and hoping something useful emerges. It means acting on what comes out of the conversation, not filing it away. And it means making space to reflect, which is harder than it sounds when the day-to-day is pressing.
The value of advisory is not proportional to hours spent. One well-prepared hour can shift the direction of a business if the questions are right and the thinking is honest. An ill-prepared session produces nothing, regardless of how long it runs.
If you are genuinely time-poor, the question is not whether you can afford the time for advisory. It is whether you can afford not to think clearly about the decisions in front of you.
When advisory is not the right choice
I will be straightforward about this, because it saves time for everyone.
Advisory is not right when you already know what you need to do. Sometimes what looks like a strategic question is actually a confidence question. You know the answer. You need permission to act on it. That is understandable, but it is not what advisory is for.
It is not right when the business is in a genuine operational crisis. If you are dealing with a cash flow emergency, a key person leaving, or a customer situation that needs immediate hands-on attention, you need direct operational help. Advisory works at one remove from the immediate. In a crisis, that distance is a liability.
It is not right if you are not prepared to act on what comes out of the sessions. That is not a criticism. Sometimes the timing is simply wrong. But advisory that produces insight and no action is a waste of both people’s time.
And it is not right if the fit is wrong. Advisory is a relationship. It requires a degree of trust and candour that does not exist on day one. If a first conversation does not produce that sense of fit, it is better for both sides to acknowledge it early.
And it is not right if what you actually need is something else entirely. If you want guaranteed access to a decision-maker, this is not that. If you want a political endorsement, this is not that either. If you want someone to sell your proposal on your behalf rather than help you prepare and present it yourself, that is not what I do. And if you are looking for a shortcut around proper process, I will not provide one. I would rather say this plainly than let you find it out later.
Saying this openly does not reduce the value of good advisory. It clarifies it.
How to judge whether an adviser is right for you
If you are considering working with an adviser, here are the questions worth asking.
Do they have direct experience of the kind of problem you are dealing with? Not academic knowledge or second-hand familiarity. Have they been in the room when those decisions were made? Have they lived with the consequences? Experience is not a guarantee of good advice, but its absence is a warning sign.
Do they ask good questions, or do they give you answers you did not ask for? A good adviser is more interested in understanding your situation than in demonstrating their own knowledge. If the first conversation is mostly them talking, take note.
Do they have a clear point of view? There is a difference between being open-minded and having no view. An adviser who reflects your own thinking back at you with added vocabulary is not helping you. You want someone who will disagree with you when they think you are wrong.
Would you be comfortable being challenged by them? The sessions that produce the most value are rarely the comfortable ones. If you cannot imagine being genuinely challenged by this person, the relationship will stay on the surface.
Can they explain what they do without using abstract language? If an adviser cannot describe their approach plainly, that is often a sign the approach itself is not as clear as it should be. Clarity of explanation and clarity of thinking tend to go together.
If you want to understand more about my background and how I work, the About page has more detail.
Strategic advisory is a thinking partnership. Its value lies not in the answers it produces but in the quality of the decisions that come out of it. When the fit is right and the timing is right, it is one of the most efficient investments a business owner can make in their own thinking, whether the decision is about growth, succession, or a sensitive proposal that touches the wider Highlands context.
If you want to understand how I work with businesses and whether that might be relevant to where you are now, the Services page sets out my approach.