The influence you’re not inviting
Who belongs on a recordkeeper's advisory board? Using McKinsey's research on hidden influencers, the case for looking past seniority and production to ERISA attorneys, home-office teams, proposal managers and client-service leaders, and for giving some of them a table of their own.
Four ways advisory boards quietly fail
The four patterns that quietly erode advisory boards by year two (no mission or metrics, over-commercialization, feedback without action, and leaving members out of the loop), each with a self-check question, framed by Forrester’s research on common B2B advisory board mistakes.
The meeting is not the deliverable
Why a well-run meeting is not the point: the structure that makes an advisory board work (rotating terms, two to three meetings a year, a written record of every session) and five longer-term measures of real impact, from opportunity flow to referral confidence.
Built around their world, not yours
Every scheduling decision sends a message. Building the advisory board calendar around members' quarter-ends, busy seasons and industry events rather than the host's convenience.
The conditions for candor
The structural conditions that produce honest feedback on an advisory board: independent facilitation, small groups, confidential reporting, told through the story of 'the House' built inside a corporate wing.
Where the gold lives
Why the simplest live question, “What are your pet peeves?”, surfaces more than any satisfaction survey: Barbara’s experience as an executive sponsor, backed by Matthew Dixon’s Effortless Experience research on friction and Christensen’s Jobs-to-Be-Done.
Opportunity or obligation?
Advisory boards as strategic alignment engines rather than relationship theater, with the results of a real board (24 advisors, $16B+ AUM, $2.7B in new assets) and the 'never a quid pro quo' principle.
The question that wasn’t on the agenda
Discovery sessions have a rhythm, and the most valuable question is often the one that was never on the agenda. Why discovery is built to find it.
The plan nobody has to ask for
Organizations don't lack planning, they lack shared planning. A partner plan built from discovery, that the advisory firm never has to ask for, is where insight turns into value.
The right question changes everything
Drawing on Hal Gregersen's research on leaders who see disruption coming, one discovery question that consistently surfaces something new with advisory partners.
The meeting designed not to be a pitch
Most firms think about who needs to be in a partner meeting; fewer think about who shouldn't be. Designing a discovery meeting that is explicitly not a pitch.
From selling to co-creating
The quiet question under every partner conversation: are we here to sell something, or to help them grow? A shift from selling to co-creating changes everything that follows.
The illusion of alignment
Why long-standing advisor relationships often rest on assumption rather than discovery, and how one 'we're in most of their proposals' moment (they were missing over half) became the origin of Know Your Channel™.