Introductions

Advice is personal, even when the subject is a company. The principal is trusting someone with a matter they have not written down in full, and may not wish to. That trust rarely begins in a cold exchange of credentials. It begins with the person who puts the two of you in touch, and with the care they take in doing it.

A good introduction is specific. It says why this conversation, why now, and what it is not. It does not attach a pitch, a deck, or a request to be picked over for free ideas, which is a request to work without the conditions of work. It leaves both sides free to decline.

We prefer to meet people this way. Not because a closed door is a mark of status, but because the alternative is a stream of conversations that want a performance: a point of view, delivered on demand, for someone who has not yet decided whether they are asking for counsel or for company. Those conversations are pleasant, and they are useless.

If you are writing to us directly, a few honest lines will do. What the decision is. Why it will not keep. Whether anyone has already been retained to carry it out. We read notes of that kind with attention. We do not read them as the opening of a sale.

There is no brochure to send in the meantime. The notes on this site are the public part of the thinking. The rest of the work belongs to the people it is for.