What is Advisory? A practical guide to standing counsel for growth-stage CEOs and Chairs.

Advisory is an ongoing retainer with the CEO or Chair. Monthly working sessions. Board-pack review before every board meeting. Ad hoc calls between meetings on the decisions that will not wait. A senior operator on standing counsel through a scale-up phase.

Advisory exists because the calendar between board meetings is where the real calls get made. A partnership offer with a strategic buyer arrives. A senior hire falls through. The pricing conversation with the largest customer moves faster than planned. Advisory is the retainer that answers those calls.

This guide is for CEOs, Chairs and PE operating partners who want a senior operator on retainer through a scale-up phase. Not full-time. Not an executive seat. Not a board seat. A rolling relationship with someone who has been in the room before and can be trusted with the difficult calls.

What Advisory actually is

Advisory is the third rung of the Ortent engagement ladder. A Sprint answers one question in two weeks. A 90-day Diagnostic reads the whole business in a quarter. Advisory is what comes next when the CEO or Chair wants a continuing relationship rather than a delivered artefact.

The engagement is designed for the moments that show up between board meetings. Where the operating team is running the business and the CEO wants a senior read on a specific call before it becomes irreversible. Where the Chair wants a pair of eyes on the draft board pack before it lands. Where a decision is due before the next board meeting and the CEO would rather test the argument on someone who has been in the same seat than take it cold to the board.

The shape is deliberately light-touch. Advisory does not sit inside the operating team. It does not carry line accountability. It does not attend management calls or weekly stand-ups. It holds standing counsel to one or two people at the top of the business and shows up when they call.

Advisory is the relationship. The written work is the record of it.

What Advisory is not

The engagement is misread often enough to need a definition by exclusion.

1. Not an operating seat. Advisory does not carry line accountability. That is Fractional CGO. When Advisory demand consistently looks like operating work, the honest conversion is to a Fractional engagement, not more Advisory hours.
2. Not a board seat. Advisory sits outside governance. No fiduciary duty, no board vote, no legal responsibility of a director. When the relationship deepens toward the board table, the honest next step is a NED appointment. That is a separate governance process.
3. Not open-ended consulting. The scope is written down at intake. Monthly working sessions, board-pack review, ad hoc calls capped at a defined ceiling. When the demand goes beyond the ceiling, the engagement steps up shape or the ceiling is reset. Silent overrun is not the model.
4. Not a personal executive coach. Advisory is a commercial and operating counsel. Executive coaching is a different discipline with different training. Where the honest need is coaching, Advisory is the wrong instrument.
5. Not a replacement for the executive team. Advisory works because the executive team is running the business. When the honest need is a missing seat, the answer is to hire the seat, not to fill it with a retainer.

When to commission Advisory

Five patterns show up in practice.

1. New CEO past first hundred days. The Diagnostic is done, the plan is set, but the CEO wants a senior read on the calls that show up between board meetings. Advisory becomes the retainer that answers those calls.
2. Chair scaling a portfolio of appointments. Advisory becomes the retainer that connects Chair thinking across the executive team without requiring the Chair to hold operating detail personally. Especially useful where the Chair is on the board of three or more portfolio companies.
3. Founder-CEO whose executive team is one layer too thin. Advisory adds an operating peer without adding cost, headcount, or governance weight. Useful in the year or two after Series B, before the executive team has all the seats filled.
4. PE ops partner working through a portfolio. One asset needs a rolling operator relationship rather than a one-off diagnostic. Advisory carries the relationship without the ops partner having to embed personally.
5. CEO preparing for a fund raise or exit twelve to eighteen months out. Advisory works alongside the CEO in the run-up to the process, sharpening the commercial story, pressure-testing the board pack, and providing an outside operator's read on the calls that shape the valuation conversation.

When not to commission Advisory

Three cases, all real.

1. When the real need is a rebuild. If the honest work is installing new commercial architecture inside the operating team, commission a Fractional CGO. Advisory is not designed to hold that weight. Trying to do rebuild work through an Advisory retainer produces a frustrated CEO and a frustrated advisor.
2. When there is no clear counterpart. Advisory is a peer relationship. It needs a CEO, Chair or PE ops partner as the counterpart. Where the natural counterpart would be the CRO or CMO, the honest engagement is Fractional CGO, not Advisory.
3. When the CEO is not going to make time for it. Advisory compounds because the working sessions land in the CEO's calendar with the same seriousness as an executive meeting. Where the CEO cannot commit to that discipline, the retainer will drift into unstructured calls, and the value never lands.

How Advisory runs

Monthly cadence with three fixed touchpoints.

1. Monthly working session. Ninety minutes with the CEO or Chair. Agenda set the week before. Two or three decisions on the table, worked through against evidence. Working notes written up within two working days.
2. Pre-board pack review. The draft board pack lands with Andrew before the board meeting. Written comments back within three working days. Where the pack needs restructuring, a call to work it through.
3. Between calls. Ad hoc availability for the decisions that will not wait. Capped at a defined ceiling per month, agreed at intake. When the demand consistently exceeds the ceiling, the engagement steps up to Fractional CGO or the ceiling is reset formally.

What a typical month looks like

Months one, three and six

Three-month minimum, then month-to-month.

1. Month one. Landing. Working sessions cover the operating rhythm, the current commercial picture, the board dynamics, and the two or three decisions on the CEO's desk. Andrew comes with pointed questions, not prepared answers. The purpose of month one is for both sides to test the fit.
2. Month three. Rhythm. The engagement finds its cadence. Working sessions move faster. The board-pack review is anticipated by the executive team rather than a surprise. Between-meeting calls are targeted rather than reactive. This is where the relationship starts to compound.
3. Month six. Compound value. Andrew is now inside the operating picture. The working sessions land on the decisions the CEO cannot easily surface with anyone inside the business. This is where Advisory earns its keep. The most valuable conversations in an Advisory retainer happen in month six and beyond, not month one.

What you get in writing

Advisory is a working relationship, but every session leaves a written record.

1. Working notes from every monthly session. Two working days after the call. Not verbatim minutes. A one-page record of what was discussed, what was decided, and what was deferred.
2. Board-pack review comments in writing. Before every board meeting. Where the comments would change the shape of the pack, delivered as a call rather than a document.
3. Ad hoc call notes when the call produces a decision that should be captured. Not every call produces something to write down. The ones that do are captured within two working days.
4. Quarterly written summary. A one-page record of what has been discussed, decided, and deferred over the quarter. Sized for a board reader, so it can be dropped into the CEO's own board narrative if useful.

How Andrew works during Advisory

The method has three defining features.

One counterpart, not several. Advisory works because the counterpart is the CEO or the Chair, one person at the top of the business. Working sessions become effective when both sides can be direct. That directness does not survive being spread across three or four counterparts. Where the operating team need a senior peer, the honest shape is Fractional CGO, not Advisory diffused across many.

Written record after every session. Every monthly session, every board-pack review, and every ad hoc call that produces a decision leaves a written record. Not verbatim notes. A short paper that says what was discussed, what was decided, what was deferred. That written trail is what makes Advisory feel structured rather than casual.

Ceiling on ad hoc time, honestly enforced. The retainer includes an ad hoc call ceiling agreed at intake. When the ceiling is hit, Andrew says so. When demand consistently exceeds it, the honest conversation is either to reset the ceiling or step up to Fractional CGO. Advisory works because the boundary is real. Silent overrun would destroy it.

Advisory vs Sprint, Diagnostic, Fractional CGO, NED

Five engagement shapes across the Ortent set. Advisory sits in the middle.

Sprint. Two weeks. One question, one board-ready written answer. Commission when the board has a specific decision on the table.

90-day Diagnostic. One quarter. Twenty questions across four operating components, answered against evidence. Commission when the board is asking whether the business is scale-ready at all.

Advisory. Ongoing retainer. Monthly working sessions with CEO or Chair, board-pack review, ad hoc calls between meetings. Commission when the CEO or Chair wants standing counsel across the quarters ahead.

Fractional CGO. Ongoing executive seat. Two days a week inside the executive team, line accountability for commercial architecture. Commission when the executive team has a missing seat and the business needs it filled by a senior operator part-time.

Non-executive director. Board seat, three-year term. Fiduciary duty. Commission when the board needs commercial and operating experience in the room with a director's legal responsibility.

Advisory sometimes converts. Into a Fractional CGO engagement when the demand becomes operating work. Into a NED appointment when the relationship deepens toward the board table. Neither conversion is expected or pushed, but both happen when the work justifies it. Both are also honest transitions, not stacks.

What to look for when commissioning Advisory

Six things a CEO, Chair or PE ops partner should insist on when commissioning any advisory retainer, from anyone.

1. A named senior operator, not a firm. Advisory is a peer relationship. Firms with delivery teams do not deliver Advisory well. The counterpart is one person and they hold the whole relationship.
2. Fixed monthly retainer, ceiling written down. Ad hoc call ceilings agreed at intake beat time-and-materials retainers. If the pricing is billable-hours, the incentive is misaligned before the engagement starts.
3. Working notes after every session. If the advisor does not write up the working sessions, the relationship stays casual. That is a red flag.
4. Board-pack review as a standard deliverable. Pre-board written commentary on the draft pack is where Advisory earns its keep. Ask for it explicitly at intake.
5. Three-month minimum, month-to-month after. Rolling retainers with no minimum drift into casual availability. Twelve-month lock-ins remove the CEO's ability to cut cleanly if the fit is wrong. Three months is the honest middle.
6. An advisor willing to say "step up to Fractional". Where the demand grows past Advisory shape, the honest conversation is a step up. Any advisor unwilling to have that conversation is selling hours, not value.

Red flags when commissioning Advisory

Four flags that suggest the retainer will not compound.

1. No written scope at intake. Where the number of monthly working sessions, the ceiling on between-meeting calls, and the pre-board deliverable are not written down, the relationship will drift within two months.
2. The advisor is stacking Advisory across multiple companies at the same stage. Advisory works because the counterpart gets senior attention. An advisor running eight simultaneous Advisory retainers at Series B-plus companies is running an availability calendar, not a counsel relationship.
3. The advisor cannot state which decisions they will not be helpful on. Senior operators know their edges. A retainer where every possible decision is in scope is a retainer with no shape. Ask, at intake, "what would you send me to someone else for". A confident answer is a good sign.
4. No conversion path stated. When Advisory demand grows or the relationship deepens toward the board table, the honest conversions are Fractional CGO or NED. An advisor who cannot describe those conversions at intake will not offer them when the moment arrives.

What people say

// COMMERCIAL LEADERSHIP ENDORSEMENT

"Andrew is one of the sharpest commercial operators I've worked with, and a charismatic leader people love to work for. He sees the GTM motion and the customer simultaneously, and he builds partner ecosystems that drive pipeline rather than just logo slides."

Rick Halton Fractional CMO and SaaS Marketeer LinkedIn →

Advisory services from Ortent

Ortent Advisory is led by Andrew Wyatt. Thirty years in B2B SaaS. Four exits: Lotus to IBM ($3.5B), Paragon Software to Phone.com ($500M), Apertio to Nokia ($240M), Clearswift to Lyceum Capital ($50M). Most recently Chief Growth Officer at Sapio Sciences and Sigmatic Sciences. Before Sapio, Chief Operating Officer at Lumeon.

Ortent Advisory retainers are commissioned by CEOs, Chairs and PE operating partners of growth-stage B2B SaaS companies, with depth in life sciences, digital health and AI SaaS. Between £5m and £30m ARR is the usual band, though earlier and later stages are workable when the fit is right.

Andrew holds one commercial position per company at any time. There is no delivery team. Working sessions, board-pack reviews and between-meeting calls are all his. That is the point.

Advisory engagements start with a fifteen-minute call to test fit. If there is a match, the next step is a written intake note covering the monthly session cadence, the ad hoc ceiling, the pre-board deliverable and the notice period. No obligation to commission until the intake note is signed.

FAQs

How does Advisory compare to a Sprint or a 90-day Diagnostic?

Sprints and Diagnostics are one-off engagements that produce written artefacts on a fixed calendar. Advisory is a rolling retainer relationship. Commission a Sprint or Diagnostic when the board needs a written verdict on a specific question. Commission Advisory when the CEO or Chair wants standing counsel across the quarters ahead.

How is Advisory different from Fractional CGO?

A Fractional CGO carries line accountability inside the executive team. Advisory does not. Fractional CGO sits at the operating table and owns commercial architecture. Advisory sits outside the operating team and holds standing counsel to the CEO or Chair. When Advisory demand starts looking like operating work, the honest conversion is to a Fractional engagement.

How is Advisory different from a NED role?

A NED sits at the board table with fiduciary duty. Advisory sits outside governance. Both provide senior challenge, but only NED carries the legal responsibility of a board director. When the Advisory relationship deepens toward the board table, the honest next step is a NED appointment. That is a separate process.

What does Advisory cost in the UK in 2026?

Fixed monthly retainer, quoted at intake. Typical range sits between £4,000 and £8,000 per month depending on the ceiling on between-meeting calls and whether the CEO wants pre-board written commentary as a standard deliverable.

Is there a minimum term?

Three-month minimum. Month-to-month thereafter with thirty days written notice on either side. The three months exists because the compound value of Advisory shows up after the relationship has landed the operating rhythm, which does not happen in month one.

What if we need more than the monthly ceiling in a given month?

For a single month, the ceiling can flex once without changing the retainer. If demand consistently exceeds the ceiling, the engagement steps up to a Fractional CGO shape or the ceiling is reset formally. Either is honest. Silent overrun is not.

Can Advisory sit alongside a Fractional CGO or a NED?

Not with Andrew. Andrew holds one commercial position per company at any time. Where Advisory would create a conflict with an existing NED or Fractional appointment, it does not run. Where a former Advisory engagement converts into a NED role, that is a governance transition not a stacking.

Who does Andrew work with on Advisory retainers?

Almost always the CEO or the Chair, occasionally the PE operating partner. Advisory is a peer relationship. Working sessions land best where the counterpart has the authority to act on the conversation. Where the natural counterpart is the CRO or CMO, the honest engagement shape is Fractional CGO, not Advisory.

The bottom line

Advisory is the retainer for the calls that will not wait for the next board meeting. Monthly working sessions. Pre-board written commentary. Ad hoc calls capped at a defined ceiling. Three-month minimum, month-to-month thereafter. If a CEO or Chair wants standing counsel through the year ahead, Advisory is the shape. If the question is narrower, commission a Sprint. If the answer will need installing rather than deciding, the honest engagement is Fractional CGO. If the seat belongs at the board table, the honest appointment is a NED role.