The Observer's Notebook

  And why it is not the same thing as a coach, a consultant, or a fractional anything. There is a particular kind of founder who has worked with three coaches, two consultants, and one agency, and is still stuck on the same problem. The advice was good. The frameworks were solid. The deliverables looked great. Nothing actually shifted. That is usually not because the previous people were bad at their jobs. It is because none of them were doing the part of the work that needed to happen first, which is figuring out what the actual problem was. That part has a name. It is called diagnostic work. The person who does it is a diagnostic strategist. The short version A diagnostic strategist is someone whose job is to identify what is structurally wrong in a business before anyone tries to fix it. Not what feels wrong. Not what the founder thinks is wrong. What is actually load-bearing in the situation, what is downstream of something else, and what is going to keep generating the same pr...

  Why Business Coaching Didn't Work for You For founders who have done the work, hired the coach, showed up to every call, and still feel like something is unresolved. Let's start with what's not true. It's not that you weren't committed. You showed up. You answered the questions honestly. You did the reflective exercises and filled out the intake forms and came to every call prepared. By any reasonable measure, you were a good client. It's not that coaching is broken. Coaching works. For the right problem, at the right moment, with the right person, it is a genuinely useful thing. I'm not here to burn it down. What's true is something quieter and more specific than either of those explanations. The process was solving the wrong problem. And because the process was confident and structured and staffed by someone with good intentions and real credentials, you didn't question it. You assumed the misfit was you. It wasn't. Coaching Is Built on a Pre...