After two decades of watching consultants deliver beautiful decks that gather dust, I learned something: advice without execution is just expensive conversation.
I’ve been on both sides of the consulting equation. I’ve hired consultants. I’ve worked alongside them. I’ve watched their carefully crafted recommendations sit in shared drives, untouched, for years.
And somewhere along the way, I realized the problem wasn’t the advice. The advice was usually good. Sometimes brilliant. The problem was the gap between knowing and doing.
The Consulting Paradox
Here’s how traditional consulting works: You hire smart people to analyze your situation. They spend weeks (or months) interviewing stakeholders, gathering data, building frameworks. They present their findings in a polished deck with charts and graphs and “key takeaways.”
You nod along. It all makes sense. The recommendations are solid. You thank them, pay the invoice, and then… nothing.
Because the deck didn’t come with the bandwidth to implement it. The strategy didn’t come with the hands to execute it. The roadmap didn’t come with the driver.
The Execution Gap
Most organizations don’t have a knowledge problem. They have an execution problem.
Leadership knows what needs to happen. They’ve probably known for a while. But everyone is already at capacity. There’s no slack in the system. No one has the time or mental space to add a major initiative to their plate—even one that would transform the business.
So the beautiful deck joins the graveyard of good intentions. And the consultant moves on to the next client, leaving behind advice that will never see the light of day.
What Actually Works
Implementation isn’t sexy. It doesn’t fit neatly into a PowerPoint. It’s messy, iterative, and requires someone to actually do the work.
That’s why I stopped consulting and started implementing.
I don’t deliver decks. I don’t present recommendations and wave goodbye. I roll up my sleeves and move the thing that’s stuck. I take the boulder off your plate and ship it.
The difference isn’t subtle. It’s the difference between “here’s what you should do” and “it’s done.”
The New Model
What if, instead of paying for advice, you paid for outcomes? What if the person you hired didn’t just tell you what to do—they did it?
That’s what implementation looks like. It’s strategy and execution in the same package. Thinking and doing from the same brain. No handoff, no translation, no gap.
You don’t need more advice. You need someone who will get it done. That’s the shift. That’s what works.