An arch does not hold itself up. It redirects weight — sideways, patiently — until the ground can accept it.
Most advisory relationships fail because they confuse visibility with support. The advisor sits in the meeting, contributes opinions, invoices for time. Nothing structural changes. The company bears its weight exactly as before.
Real counsel is structural. It changes where the load goes: who signs, who reviews, who is notified. When an advisor succeeds, a specific pressure that used to fall on one person now falls on a system that was designed to take it.
Three tests for structural work
We use three questions to decide whether a proposed mandate is structural or decorative. All three must answer "yes" for us to accept the engagement.
- 01Will the change persist after we are gone?
- 02Does the change reduce, rather than redistribute, founder risk?
- 03Can the client explain the change, unaided, in a board meeting?
The third test is the hardest. A structural change that only the advisor can explain is not a structural change. It is a dependency. We have turned down engagements because the proposed solution required our continuing presence to function.
Asymmetry is the other half of the lesson. A well-designed arch is not symmetric in its stress map. The weight flows along a specific curve, and the stones at the haunches carry far more than the stones at the crown. Good governance is the same. Some directors will carry more load than others. The attempt to make every role equal usually makes every role weaker.
When a client asks us for a "balanced" board, we ask which three risks they want balanced against. The answer usually reveals that the word "balanced" was standing in for a harder question they had not yet asked themselves.
Matt Brown is a founding partner of Aven Advisors. Earlier field notes are collected here.