Executive Advising

The role of the executive advisor is to provide advising, in the form of recommendations and/or suggestions, upon specific situations or matters to the business leader, or to the management team. Differently, the executive coach works with the business leader to increase his/her performance by helping him/her to develop skills and/or becoming more self-aware of their limitations and biases. Advisors generally have a more granular knowledge and experiences on a specific set of matters.

Sometimes, and improperly, the advisor and consultant terms are used interchangeable. Although, there is a significant difference between them. An advisor is normally a person with more and deeper knowledge in a specific area and usually also includes cross-functional and multidisciplinary expertise. An adviser’s role is that of a guide and differs from that of a task-specific, more “hands-on”, consultant. Consultants bring execution and implementation capacities that advisors don’t possess. In general, an adviser is typically part of the leadership, whereas consultants fulfill functional roles. Commonly, consultants are hired in order to run projects, fix problems, make operations more efficient, cut costs or to do anything a client needs.

An executive advisor could prove to be of significant help not only in the initial, more strategic stages of identifying or evaluating the required changes but also during the implementation of the solutions devised to achieve those changes. Typical situations faced by business leaders that could benefit from executive advising are:

Infusing and fostering innovation into business models, products and services

Turnaround of failing businesses or operations

Strategic Plan Development & Implementation

Dysfunctional Management Team Dynamics

Reengineering of sales processes and/or sales force

Growth driven organizational transformations

Whether you are considering, or seeking, a transformational innovation, a cultural evolution, an organizational reengineering, or a new core business strategy, the result will be uncharted and spread change throughout the organization. A first key to the success of such a move, it is to choose the best among the potential alternatives. An effective executive advisor must understand the situation at hand, often a complex one, quickly and taking into consideration the organizational goals and strategies of the client. She/he should be able to draw into her knowledge and experience to construct an expanded view of the situation including opportunities that would result in solutions or improvements. Also, he/she should have the capabilities to communicate this new expanded understanding clearly while remaining attentive, and open, to new information that could arise during that process. Bottom line is that an effective executive advisor should help the business leader to get an urgent problem understood, and potentially solved, quickly.