The method
How a mandate runs.
Four phases, in this order, with one deliverable each. Each deliverable makes the next one possible: a plan without a costed diagnostic is a list of intentions, and steering without a plan is a meeting. The split below is the one written into the contract.
- 01
Diagnostic
Objective
Name and cost the constraint, and explicitly rule out the workstreams that are not it.
Split
- Client
- Data access, and one hour of interview per person involved.
- Agency
- Rebuild, interviews, analysis, writing and presentation of the note.
The work
- Read access to the data: back office, ad platforms, billing, analytics, management accounts where they exist.
- A rebuild of the real unit economics, including costs the usual reporting leaves out.
- Interviews with the growth team, the incumbent suppliers, and one or two people outside marketing — support, fulfilment or product, depending on the model.
- A review of the last twelve months of decisions: what was tried, what was stopped, and on what grounds.
Deliverable
Diagnostic note: unit economics rebuilt, primary constraint costed, workstreams ruled out with the reason for ruling them out. The document is yours, including if we stop there.
- 02
Costed growth plan
Objective
Turn the diagnostic into a sequence of workstreams, each with a cost, a measurable hypothesis and a stop condition.
Split
- Client
- The final call on available budget and non-negotiable constraints.
- Agency
- Writing, costing, sequencing, and defending the plan in front of your partners or board.
The work
- Each workstream written as a testable hypothesis, with the expected result and the payback period targeted.
- Costing: budget, resource required, dependencies, and the opportunity cost of not doing it.
- Sequencing driven by the constraint, not by ease of execution.
- Stop conditions written before launch, never during.
Deliverable
Sequenced plan over a stated horizon: budget per lever, exit measures, stop conditions, and what is explicitly deferred.
- 03
Directed execution
Objective
Get the plan executed by the teams and suppliers in place, and decide weekly what is stopped, accelerated or replaced.
Split
- Client
- Execution by your teams and suppliers, attendance at the weekly ritual.
- Agency
- Deciding, prioritising, directing suppliers, reporting to the directors.
The work
- Weekly steering ritual: an agenda, prepared data, dated decisions on the way out.
- One shared dashboard, replacing the parallel reports.
- Direct management of suppliers within their contractual remit.
- Hiring or replacement where the constraint turns out to be a person or a missing role.
- Budget decisions along the way, logged and reasoned in writing.
Deliverable
Decisions logged and dated, a dashboard kept current, and a written monthly note for the directors or the board.
- 04
Handover
Objective
Leave the organisation able to hold the decisions without me, and withdraw.
Split
- Client
- Naming the people who take each remit.
- Agency
- Documentation, training, and support through a phased withdrawal.
The work
- Operating documentation: measurement approach, thresholds, decision tree, and the history of decisions with their reasoning.
- Named handover of each remit to identified people.
- The team takes the weekly ritual back, first observed, then unobserved.
- Exit review: what is secured, what is still fragile, and what to watch.
Deliverable
Complete operating pack, remits handed over, a stated withdrawal timetable kept to.
What frames the mandate
A few fixed rules, the same on every mandate whatever the sector.
- Fees
- No commission on media spend. An agency paid a percentage of what it spends cannot recommend spending less. The figure is set after the first conversation, according to scope: no public rate card.
- Confidentiality
- An NDA is signed before any data access. No figures are published without written permission.
- Exclusivity
- No directly competing mandate in the same sector and market during the engagement.
- Number of mandates
- Few mandates at once. Deciding well requires knowing a company better than a monthly meeting allows.
- Exit
- Fourteen days notice, on either side, with no minimum term. The principle: a mandate that works comes to an end, it does not renew indefinitely.
The first phase stands on its own.
The diagnostic can be commissioned with no obligation to continue. You keep the note either way — it is the document you will use to decide, with me or without me.