Advisory Board for Small Business: Choose Useful Help

Recruit for the Decision You Need to Make

Write down the decision before writing a list of impressive names. An MSP preparing to remove the owner from delivery needs different help from one assessing an acquisition. Be specific about the gap: delegating commercial authority, understanding account economics, or judging whether the team can carry another business.

For the proposed pair, I'd look for an operator who has handled the kind of change you're considering and someone who can challenge its financial or commercial assumptions. Ask what they personally owned in that work. A job title or a successful company logo doesn't tell you which part of the result they understand.

BDC recommends choosing people whose skills complement the owner's and bringing strategic questions to regular meetings. I'd use that advice to write separate briefs for the people you approach. Each brief should say which decision needs help and what knowledge you expect the person to bring.

Keep current interests visible. A person selling you a platform or hoping to acquire the MSP may still have useful knowledge, but their commercial interest belongs beside their recommendation. Decide what information you're comfortable sharing and which discussions need a different adviser.

Ask for Work, Not an Endorsement

Use a concrete invitation: 'I'm deciding how to [defined change]. I'm looking for someone who can challenge [specific assumption] and review the evidence behind the plan. Would you discuss an advisory role, including preparation, meetings, confidentiality, and compensation?'

Ask the candidate to describe a relevant decision and what information changed their view. You aren't looking for the answer to your own problem before agreeing the engagement. You're checking whether their reasoning and experience match the help you're seeking.

Here is what I'd cut: the invitation to lend a famous name to the website. An adviser count, a photograph, or an impressive biography doesn't show that the owner received useful challenge. Marketing can't repair a service operation that still waits for the owner to approve routine work.

The model's position is to build recurring, profitable revenue without reliance on the owner. Carry that into the brief if independence is your aim. Ask the advisers to examine the decisions that still stop without you, rather than merely help describe the business as ready to scale.

Agree What You Offer in Return

Discuss the work before the fee. Set out meeting preparation, the information supplied, attendance, and any work between meetings. Ask for the person's proposed terms against that scope rather than treating introductions, document review, and ongoing availability as an unlimited extra.

If you propose a fee, agree the amount and payment arrangements directly. If someone is considering an unpaid role, confirm why the arrangement is useful to them and what participation they're actually offering. Don't assume that enthusiasm at the invitation stage supplies continuing capacity.

Keep any separate commercial work explicit. An adviser who later provides a valuation, recruits a manager, or introduces a buyer is doing something beyond discussing the plan. Agree that work separately so you can judge its scope and interests instead of discovering them inside an advisory recommendation.

Put the Working Arrangement in Writing

Use a written brief to make those responsibilities clear in the arrangement you actually run.

• Purpose: the owner names the decisions and business goal the group will help examine.
• Scope: each adviser confirms the experience and work they will contribute, including preparation and availability.
• Information: the owner identifies the records to share and agrees how confidential material will be handled.
• Interests: each participant discloses relevant commercial relationships before discussing a recommendation.
• Decisions: the brief names who considers the advice and who holds responsibility for approving and implementing an action.
• Terms: the participants agree compensation, expenses, review of the arrangement, and how either side can end it.

Give the brief to everyone before work starts and resolve different expectations. A shared title isn't enough if one adviser expects informal conversation and another expects to direct employees. Keep the actual decision route consistent with the responsibilities you've agreed.

Bring a Decision Pack to the Meeting

BDC offers quarterly meetings as an example cadence. You can use that as the starting schedule proposed here, then check whether it fits the decisions and preparation involved. Book the meeting and its preparation dates together rather than hoping a useful discussion will appear between busy calendars.

Send the decision, the options you're considering, the evidence, and the assumptions you want challenged. Show what remains unknown. If you're considering delegation, include the current approval route and examples of work waiting for the owner, with confidential client details handled appropriately.

In the hypothetical before-and-after example, the owner brings a general ambition to become less involved in service. I'd change the pack to identify which approvals the lead could take on, the information needed, and the boundaries of that authority. The advisers can challenge a proposed change instead of guessing what less involved means.

Record the recommendation separately from the decision you take. Assign the next action to the person doing it and agree the evidence they will bring back. Don't put the adviser down as the action owner merely because they suggested it; confirm any work you've asked them to undertake.

Count Decisions That Move Into Work

Keep a decision log alongside the meeting notes. Record the question, evidence requested, advice given, owner's decision, action owner, and current result. Count actions due and actions completed, but read what completion changed before treating that count as success.

For an owner-dependence question, count the relevant approvals still waiting for the owner in the work system. Record the type of decision and why it waited. Compare the same kinds of work after an agreed delegation change; a quieter queue alone doesn't establish that the arrangement improved anything.

Write the number that would change your mind before reviewing the result. Set it from your own starting count, risk, and capacity. If the evidence shows no reduction in the dependency you meant to remove, examine the decision route and support before crediting a more polished strategy presentation.

Use the log to review the advisory arrangement too. Keep people whose challenge is relevant and whose agreed contribution arrives. Revise the brief when the business question changes. Start by writing the decision you need help with, then approach the person whose experience would let them challenge it.