The most dangerous assumptions are the ones nobody thinks to question.
Hard strategic problems rarely suffer from a shortage of smart people. They suffer from consensus — familiar frames, inherited assumptions, industry language, and answers that became obvious before the question was examined closely enough. My advisory work is designed to interrupt that.
I’m not there to become another member of the project team.
I work best when the stakes are high, the situation is ambiguous, and someone needs permission to ask the question nobody inside the system can comfortably ask. Growth. A category being disrupted. AI strategy. A leadership decision. A proposition nobody is challenging. A future everybody is pretending to understand. Sometimes the work is one conversation. Sometimes it becomes a relationship.
Four ways in.
Put the idea under pressure. See what survives.
A focused session for a leadership team facing a consequential belief, decision, or plan. We identify the assumptions underneath the strategy — then we attack them. What must be true for this to work? Which belief is inherited rather than demonstrated? What will customers, employees, and competitors actually do, rather than what the deck assumes? Where will technology and human behavior collide? The objective is not to destroy the idea. It is to make the surviving idea stronger.
Change the frame before you change the strategy.
A customized half-day or leadership session built around one important organizational question. No generic framework transplanted from another client — one question, examined until it moves.
A thinking partner without an organizational agenda.
For those dealing with ambiguity, growth, disruption, or a major strategic transition. The value isn’t another consultant in the operating model. It’s a trusted external perspective with permission to disagree. I take on only a few of these at a time.
Small room. Consequential question. Real conversation.
No presentation required. One important question, and enough time to go somewhere unexpected.
Where this sits alongside Shapiro+Raj.
My role at Shapiro+Raj gives me the privilege of working alongside extraordinary strategists, behavioral scientists, and researchers. Formal insight, research, and consulting engagements belong there. The work described on this page is different: direct access to me, as a provocateur, counselor, and thinking partner. Explore Shapiro+Raj →