Strategy isn’t always what’s in the playbook.
Sometimes, it’s what you notice on a Tuesday morning when things feel just a little… off. These are short takes on the patterns, problems, and moments that shape good leadership.
Every partnership ends. Only timing is negotiable. When leaders postpone that conversation, value bleeds quietly—through stalled decisions, rising staff attrition, and reputational fatigue. By the time lawyers are called, half the damage is already sunk cost.
When CC Means Conflict
In this piece, I unpack how routine emails between business partners quietly turn into legal battlegrounds; long before a dispute is formally declared. It’s not about poor communication. It’s about communication weaponised. If your inbox feels more like a litigation file than a leadership tool, this one’s worth a read.
Every firm or business has that director who replies “approve” from their phone and calls it governance. Their name carries legal risk and comfort for banks and buyers, but they no longer act as a live director.
This issue of The K Advisory Notes maps the silent partner pattern and sets out an Assess → Align → Act checklist for repairing it.
Absence of defined authority creates emotional waste. It turns competent people into interpreters of mood. Partners start measuring influence instead of outcomes. Staff hide behind “waiting for approval.” The business slows without noticing.
Senior staff have been “promised” equity for years.
The cap table for a sale or merger appears. Their names are missing.
This week’s Unhappy Mondays looks at Implied Ownership (unfunded promises that turn high performers into claimants) and the simple audit to clean them up before a deal.
Every partnership reaches a moment of quiet strain. This white paper examines why professional service firms often miss early warnings, how the cost of waiting compounds, and what practical interventions — like The Fix and The Second Brain™ — can restore clarity, confidence, and calm profitability before the lawyers ever need to step in.
Most succession conversations stall because they try to solve everything at once. The result? Paralysis disguised as planning. This article shows you how to cut through the fog in 90 minutes by mapping the actual territory before you build the plan. No false promises of clarity. Just a method for converting open-ended anxiety into classified constraint.
Navigating the complexities of ownership transition can be a daunting endeavor for any business owner. At K Advisory, we specialize in facilitating smooth transitions by providing tailored solutions that address the unique challenges each business faces. Our expertise in mediation, strategic advice, and negotiation equips us to guide you through the intricacies of ownership transfer, ensuring that all parties involved are aligned and informed. In this blog post, we will explore key considerations for successful business negotiations during the ownership transfer process, empowering you to make confident decisions that pave the way for a prosperous future.
Most business crises don’t explode. They erode. Quietly, then all at once. In this short piece, I unpack the Overboard Protocol™, our rapid-reset methodology for stabilising fast, restoring calm, and getting leadership teams back on course.
If your firm’s decisions are stuck, trust is fraying, or conversations are happening in all the wrong places, this one’s for you.
What if the real risk to your firm isn’t disruption but denial? In this piece, I unpack the cautionary tale of Blackberry, not as a story about tech, but as a mirror for today’s professional leaders. The firms most at risk from AI aren’t the least sophisticated. They’re the ones who once led the field until their old success became a blindfold.
If you’re a managing partner, principal, or senior advisor still “optimising the keyboard,” this article is a nudge to lift your eyes to the touchscreen. We call these quiet tipping points ‘keyboard moments’ and spotting them before they break your business is exactly why the K Advisory built The Unravelling Map™ and our AI Readiness Dashboard.
When did running your practice stop being enjoyable? Most successful firms hit this point: profitable on paper, exhausting to lead. The problem isn't working harder. It's seeing clearer.
The firms that survive won’t be the ones working harder — they’ll be the ones that reset with clarity, untangle the hidden knots, and rediscover the enjoyment that makes leadership sustainable.
Most shareholder exits stall because the people can't agree on what the numbers mean, not because the numbers don't work. This article breaks down a four-step alignment play that turns deadlock into decision. It covers how to establish real constraints, separate positions from interests, design a trusted decision process, and test agreements before they're formalised.
Why do promising deals stall?
Not because of complexity but because no one holds the centre. In this piece, Kyle Kimball outlines the quiet mechanics of drift, why momentum fades, and how clarity, not pressure, brings deals to completion.
Strategic advisory structuring in pre-sale environments. When governance meets commercial reality.
Strategic structuring of partnership transitions and equity restructures. When ownership meets operational reality.
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