Independent advisor to chief executives, chairs and boards
Your reports say the plan is on track. Your people know it is not.
Big decisions are often made on half the picture. I find out the other half, in confidence, before it costs you.
Since 2013, Frank Tsuro has advised more than 230 C-suite and director-level executives. He has spoken in person in more than 15 countries across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America.
A green dashboard and a project 2 years late.
A financial services group was 2 years behind on a major systems change and millions over budget. Every month the board reviewed a dashboard and every month it was green. The chair asked me to find out why the system would not launch.
It launched 3 months later.
Read what was really happening
I spoke to people one to one and in confidence, from the chief operating officer to the staff who run branch compliance.
The software worked. But the new system would stop branch managers from overriding compliance checks. Without those overrides, they could not meet their daily loan targets. The operations lead knew. He could not say so, because the board had already announced the launch date. So he kept asking the supplier for small changes that pushed the launch back.
I gave the chair 2 pages. Their message was simple: your technology is ready, but your targets and your compliance rules cannot both be met.
The board changed the branch targets and told the operations lead he could speak without risk.
The client is not named. Shared with their permission. Read the full account
Bad news gets smaller on its way to the top.
Telling the boss about a problem early can cost a manager. Making it sound smaller costs nothing. So at every level, the bad news shrinks a little more. I call this the filter.
The green dashboard was not a lie. It was the filter at work.
- Board
- Executive team
- Senior managers
- Supervisors
- The floor
AI can write the report. It cannot hear what your people will not say.
Much of what leaders once paid coaches and consultants for, they now get from AI in seconds. But AI works with what it is given. It does not question the brief and nobody tells it what they are afraid to say.
An AI system trained on a filtered business learns the filter, then repeats it, fast and with confidence.
For chief executives, chairs and their boards
Advisory
Beside you on one important decision, for as long as it needs. One fee, agreed before we start.
How advisory works
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Speaking
4 signature talks drawn from the advisory work, each ending with questions your audience can use the next morning.
See the talksIdeas I keep coming back to.
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The Wider Work
FranklySpeaking
When a problem keeps coming back, my firm finds the cause and fixes the system, with a method adapted from aircraft accident investigation.
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Leaders are asked to carry more every year, with the same hours and thinner support. The Leader’s Office is the support behind the leader: a chief of staff and a team when they are needed, without the full-time hire.
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