What happens in the room.
A Tier 03 Operating Partner engagement is on-site, principal-to-principal. The mechanics are different from individual advisory in five places: the first conversation, the conflict check, the cadence, the deliverables, and the close.
Each is described below. None of them are theoretical.
Sixty to ninety minutes. With the principals who can act.
The first conversation is not a discovery call and not a pitch. It is the conversation that confirms or reassigns scope. The principals who can act on the decision are in the room. Stan reads the situation, names the structural question underneath, and proposes the engagement shape.
By the end, two things are true: either the engagement is scoped in writing, or the conversation has surfaced why a different structure would serve you better. Both outcomes are useful. Neither is a sales conversation.
A board chair, two principals, and Stan. Sixty minutes. The structural question gets named. The room sees it together. The engagement is scoped or redirected by the end of the call.Formal. Before every engagement begins.
Before any Tier 03 engagement starts, Stan runs a formal conflict check against active and recent engagements, the network of operating ventures, and disclosed competitive overlaps. The check happens in writing and is shared with the room.
If a conflict surfaces, the engagement does not begin. If a partial conflict surfaces, the scope is narrowed in writing to remove the overlap, or the engagement is declined. Confidentiality protocols are explicit. No information from one engagement reaches another. Ever.
The conflict check is the structural reason multi-party rooms can hold Stan's read. Without it, the work is not safe to do at the principal level. With it, the work is what the room needs.In the team's actual meeting. No parallel coaching.
Tier 03 is not a series of one-on-one calls behind the scenes. The work happens in the room where decisions actually get made. Board meetings, founding-team sessions, ownership-group conversations, transition working sessions.
No parallel coaching. No private side channels. No backchannel reads on individual principals. The structural read lands on the table the same way for everyone, in the room where the decision belongs. That is the point.
Cadence is every two to four weeks, sustained across two to six months scoped against the transition. In person where geography allows; video where it does not. Travel is included in the engagement scope, billed at cost.
If the work needs to be done one principal at a time, that is Tier 02 Principal Circle territory. Tier 03 is the room.None unless the sponsor explicitly asks.
Default Tier 03 produces no written deliverables. No deck, no recommendation memo, no playbook. The conversation is the product, the structural read is the value, and the room is where it lands.
Sponsors occasionally request a written summary for a non-attending stakeholder (an absent board member, an LP, a future principal joining mid-engagement). When requested, the summary is short, scoped to what the room agreed to share, and reviewed by the principals before it leaves the room.
Recordings of conversations are never made. Slack channels and shared docs are never created. The engagement runs on the cadence of meetings and direct communication.
Closes on closure. Not on calendar.
Tier 03 engagements close when the transition closes. Not when a calendar runs out. If the work is scoped at four months and the structural decision closes in three, the engagement closes at three. If the transition takes six instead of four because of a regulatory window or a leadership change mid-engagement, the engagement extends.
The fee structure is set against the scope, not against billable hours. Extensions are written into the original scope as a contingency, not negotiated mid-engagement under pressure.
Most Tier 03 engagements close cleanly inside the original scope. A small number extend by one month. A smaller number close early. None drag.
If the decision belongs to a room, the application begins in writing.
Apply for Tier 03 Personal reply within 48 hours · Conflict check before every engagement