How to get great results when hiring a business adviser

A successful relationship with your business adviser depends on open communication and a willingness to be open-minded and embrace change

In our last Insight, we tossed around some ideas about when you should (and shouldn't) hire a business adviser. In this new post, we’re assuming you’ve decided it’s right for you and intend to act on that decision(or have already). 

We now want to help you tackle the next challenge…how to make the engagement work as well as possible to deliver successful outcomes. Perhaps, dare we suggest, even exceed your expectations.

When these relationships work well, they drive genuinely positive change. When they don't, it's usually because expectations are foggy. The early stage of any client/adviser partnership is a time for clear and open communication. If that’s not present, it makes everything that comes later more challenging than it needs to be.

So…let’s look into what makes them successful.

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Key Takeaways

• A great client/adviser relationship is built on open communication and clear expectations

• Don't shortcut the initial business assessment phase. It's an opportunity to look deeper than the obvious "symptoms" in your business. Keep an open mind during the process

• There's a line between advice and implementation. It's important to establish those boundaries early and understand what ongoing help your adviser can provide

• While you shouldn't expect an adviser to "do the work" they recommend should be done, you should definitely expect them to help you create the environment for effective execution

• Good advice is all about helping you discover potential you might not be seeing

As always, please feel free to share this Insight with clients, colleagues and others in your network.

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Setting the tone: what to share with your business adviser right upfront

When you first engage an adviser, there's often an understandable instinct to lead with your strengths. After all, you want your newly minted adviser to think well of you and your business. So, you focus on all the things that demonstrate you've built something substantial.

That's natural, but there’s something even more valuable: being clear about your challenges and things you've already tried to address them. After all, you haven’t hired an adviser because everything’s running super-smoothly.

To do the job you've hired them for, your adviser needs the complete context – the good, bad and ugly. It’s like seeing a doctor - they need to know what hurts. That’s why you’re there.

The initial business assessment: why it matters

This is where an engagement can hit its first challenge: the deep dive business assessment (or diagnostic) can feel like a hurdle when you're hanging out for solutions.

You know sales are down - you just want help fixing the problem.

But a good adviser will want to understand all the potential reasons sales are down before getting into solution mode. And that means digging deeper than the obvious, surface-level  symptoms.

The initial business assessment: an opportunity to look beyond obvious symptoms

The business assessment phase is when your adviser should - politely - challenge your diagnosis of what's wrong. They'll want to validate it and make sure you're not about to invest time and money solving the wrong problem. We discussed this “Symptom Trap” in this recent Insight.

As an example, one of our clients, in the very early stage of our engagement, lamented the fact that they’d had 90%+ employee turnover and that newer employees were showing significant signs of disengagement. Our client put it down to bad hiring.

A couple of weeks into our assessment process, we discovered the real issue: while as an owner and leader, our client was crystal clear on the purpose, vision and overall direction of the business, employees had virtually zero visibility of all this. As a result, they were flying blind with no clarity about where the business was heading and why and how their roles contributed to business success.

If we'd jumped straight to helping “find better people”, turnover would still be high and engagement low. By taking time to understand root causes of the challenge and develop the right response, we helped our client cut turnover to virtually zero and create an environment where employees thrive.

The business assessment phase isn't about delaying action - it's about ensuring the action you take will address root causes and solve the problem.

What helps during the diagnostic work

There are a few things that make this phase more effective:

Open access to information

The more transparent you can be in sharing what you see happening in your business the faster and more accurately your adviser can diagnose what's really going on. You’’ll be asked to provide a lot of data about a lot of drivers in your business. If some of that data provides a less-than-ideal picture of a particular aspect, that’s exactly the point, so don’t gloss over realities.

Make key people available

Input from your team will uncover information hidden in plain sight

A thorough assessment requires input from different parts of your business. Your managers see things you don't. Your frontline employees have insights that never make it to leadership meetings.

Making these conversations possible provides invaluable perspective. They might reveal some uncomfortable truths, but for the best outcomes, you need all the facts on the table.

Read more about how these multiple internal views can impact your business.

Stay curious

At some point (probably more than once) your adviser will almost definitely ask about something that seems completely obvious to you.

There's usually a reason for that.

Those questions will be designed to uncover situations that aren't quite what they appear to be. Or perhaps long-standing assumptions that are outdated or invalid.

The line between advice and implementation

One of the most important things to clarify early is what you can expect from your adviser and what remains your responsibility.

What advisers should do:

• Diagnose and document root causes of challenges that are impeding growth

• Provide recommendations based on analysis of the data

• Create frameworks for improvement and growth

• Help you through difficult decisions and prioritisation of opportunities

• Keep you accountable to commitments you make

• Transfer knowledge and skills to you and your team

What stays with you and your team:

• Day-to-day implementation of recommendations

• Decision-making (advisers guide, you decide)

• Managing your team through changes

• Executing relevant action plans

• Maintaining momentum between advisory sessions

This isn't about advisers avoiding the hard work - it's about ensuring the capability stays within your business rather than becoming dependent on external support.

That said, your adviser shouldn’t just walk away. At the very least, they should remain available to you to help you through roadblocks. That might be on an ad-hoc basis, through a more formal advisory board set-up, or a combination.

The accountability element

This is where an advisory board model becomes really valuable. Your adviser isn't there to do the work - they're there to help create an environment that ensures the work gets done.

In practice, this looks like:

• Regular check-ins on progress towards agreed milestones

• Honest conversations and assessments when implementation stalls (which it sometimes does)

• Adjusting action plans based on what you learn during execution

• Providing support when you hit unexpected obstacles

• Celebrating wins and learning from setbacks

• A more comprehensive business review at agreed intervals

We’ve worked with several business owners who at some point in our engagement breath a figurative sigh of relief in having someone external they can lean on for guidance and advice. It’s not that they don’t know what to do necessarily, but they tell us that having us keep them accountable for doing what matters really invaluable.

That's really how accountability should work - supportive, not judgmental.

You need an effective feedback loop

Advice is all about collaboration, so open feedback is a really important element of a successful relationship

The best advisory relationships, particularly in the early stages, have clear two-way communication. You shouldn’t just be taking advice and implementing it - you're actively collaborating to refine the approach based on what you're learning as you go.

Sharing what's actually happening

Both wins and challenges. It’s important to affirm what’s working because you should at least keep doing it and, quite probably, do more of it. On the other hand, if something's harder than expected or not really working as planned, that's valuable information that helps refine future activity.

Putting forward your views

You know your business, your team, and your market better than anyone. That’s just a given. When something doesn't feel right to you, you shouldn’t feel obliged to go ahead without question. Your input, given sooner than later, is valuable for refining the way forward.

Discussing what you learn during implementation

Once the process of implementing recommendations begins in earnest, it can reveal new information or challenges. Don’t ignore those insights. There’s a strong likelihood they’ll improve future outcomes.

Common challenges (and how to deal with them)

Even with the best intentions on both sides, progress can stall. Here’s some examples of how that can happen…

Cherry-picking recommendations

Sometimes there's a temptation to implement only the recommendations that seem easiest or most comfortable. This is understandable because change, particularly in business, is challenging. But a business is a “system” with many moving parts, most of which are interrelated in some way. A good adviser recognises that and frames their recommendations in the context of that system. So before you succumb to the cherry-picking temptation, be alert to the implications of doing so.

Impatience for results

Real business change takes time, which can feel more than a little frustrating when you're keen to see results. If you find yourself thinking "this is taking too long," it's important to have an open conversation with your adviser about expectations and timelines.

Other priorities getting in the way of implementation

This is a common challenge…great recommendations that don't get implemented because doing what’s “urgent” keeps getting in the way. Well-structured action plans for each recommendation will help with this as is a willingness to objectively challenge what counts as urgent in the business. This is exactly why the accountability element of advisory relationships is so important.

A focus on tactics rather than longer-term impact

It's easy to get excited about the immediacy of short-term “sugar-hit” activity while the fundamental changes needed for longer-term impact don't get the same attention. Your adviser can help you stay focused on strategic changes, not just tactical ones.

How do you know if the relationship is working

There are several factors that indicate you're getting value from your advisory relationship.

You've started having different conversations

Cast your mind back to the “before”…most conversations in the workplace were likely focused on putting out fires, dealing with the issues of the day and running down problems that keep recurring. You’d have been having those conversations with employees, with clients and probably with people outside the business (notably your loved ones, which isn’t great).

You know your adviser’s doing their thing when the topics and nature of your conversations  shifts and the thinking deepens. You tend to ask “why” a lot more than “how” and the focus moves to more strategic, higher-impact issues.

Problems get resolved, not just managed

Remember those issues that used to recur regardless of how many times you tried to address them? They start to disappear because you’re dealing with what’s at the core of the problem, rather than the symptom itself. On top of that, employees starg bringing you solutions instead of just expecting you to fix every problem that comes up.

Most of all, you know the relationship with your adviser is working when you feel a greater sense of clarity

You feel more confident in decisions

This is a huge benefit that flows from a strong advisory relationship. Your confidence in your decision grows not because everything becomes easy, but because you have better frameworks for working through complex challenges. But it’s not just all about you…you’ve also taken the time to develop strong internal communication channels and feedback loops that give your employees more confidence to step up.

You're working more on your business

Before you hired your adviser, you had little time for anything other than dealing with the day-to-day. The classic “working in the business” scenario. But now, you find more of your time naturally shifts to bigger picture thinking and planning for the future of the business. You devote way less time to firefighting and micromanaging which are huge contributors to stress and burnout.

What should success look like longer-term?

There's quite a clear difference over time between engagements that are working and those that aren't.

The ones that work well share this characteristic: the business owner can articulate not just what's different, but why specific changes happened and how to sustain the momentum.

And that's the real goal.

Rather than creating dependence, a strong advisory relationship delivers enhanced capability in a business. Not just better results – that’s part of it for sure – but different thinking that creates ongoing improvement and sustainability of growth.

The question that guides everything

There’s one question you can ask yourself to figure out if an advisory relationship would deliver real value:

Are you more interested in confirming what you already think, or in discovering potential you might not be seeing?

Genuine curiosity about blind spots and opportunities, along with openness to acting on advice, is what makes advisory relationships genuinely valuable.

Does this Insight hit home?

Want to create a framework for future growth that's sustainable? 

A conversation with a GrowthCatalyst adviser could be just what you need.

Contact us to arrange a face-to-face or virtual conversation.

Alternatively, you can book a time for an initial discussion here.