The first year of carrying the title.
A six-month private partnership for new CEOs — promoted operators, founder-CEOs reaching scale, and successors stepping into the chair for the first time. The work changes shape when the buck stops with you. We sit beside that change.
- What it is.
- A six-month private coaching partnership. One CEO, one partner.
- Who it's for.
- First-time CEOs in their first one to three years. Promoted operators learning the chair. Founder-CEOs whose company has crossed a threshold the early version of the role cannot meet.
- How it works.
- Two to three 60-minute sessions a month, with unlimited access between them. A longer first session opens it. A final session closes it.
- What it costs.
- Quoted in conversation after a first call.
- How to start.
- Write a short inquiry. We respond within five business days or decline if the fit isn’t there.
What changes in the chair
The skills that got you the title are not the skills that will keep you in it. The thing operators are best at — solving the visible problem — is the thing CEOs are most often punished for doing too much of.
The work of being a CEO is mostly the work of holding the company while other people solve. That requires a different kind of attention, a different kind of patience, and a different kind of restraint than the role you were promoted out of.
Most first-time CEOs do not have anywhere private to learn this. The board cannot fully be that place. Your executives cannot. Your peers can sometimes — but peer groups are wide, not deep, and the question you actually need to ask is too specific for a roundtable.
Wide is not deep.
What we work on
Decision velocity — knowing which decisions only you can make, and getting them out of the queue. Board management — telling your board what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. The founder relationship if you are not the founder, or the operator relationship if you are. Time and attention as a finite executive resource. The personal cost of carrying the title without becoming the title.
What we don’t do
We do not run an MBA. We do not connect you to a peer group. We do not prepare you for your next role. We are not the board, not the search firm, not the executive recruiter, not the leadership development program HR is putting you through.
What we do: we partner with you on the decisions that only you can make, in private, sustained over six months, while you grow into a chair you have only just sat down in.
Shape of the engagement
Six months. Two to three 60-minute sessions a month, with unlimited access between them. A longer first session opens it. A final session closes it. Confidential. No observers, no recordings, no case study.
Investment is quoted in conversation.
Beginning
Write to us as the CEO. Tell us what is actually on your desk, what you are actually carrying, and what kind of partner you have been looking for.