A board gets one chance to make this call, and the people it would normally ask are rarely neutral. We evaluate the person independently, show how strong the evidence is behind every finding, and leave the board a record that holds up if the decision is challenged later. Fixed fee. Fixed scope.
The board engagement · six weeks
You already own the business. The question is who runs it.
A bar set after you can see who clears it is not a bar, and it is the first thing anyone challenging the decision goes after. The criteria, what each one counts for, and where the bar sits are all agreed with the board in writing before evidence is gathered, and the file shows that order.
Criteria built from the company’s next eighteen months rather than a generic competency model. We ask each director for their top three priorities rather than for percentages, which takes ten minutes instead of an afternoon. The bar is set and approved in writing.
We walk the board through the findings, then hand over the file. At that point the diligence is closed. Anything that surfaces later goes into forward-looking advice rather than reopening the scoring.
The recommendation. Every finding shows how strong the evidence behind it is, so you can see how much weight each one carries.
What we looked at, the standard the board approved, who we spoke to and who declined, and the map of separate sources behind each finding.
Material that belongs with your lawyers rather than in the board room. Kept complete, and never trimmed to match a shortened deck.
Source-independence mapping on the evidence you already hold, as a written memo. No interviews, no scoring, no recommendation.
One person, the full method, all three deliverables.
A defined candidate set, the full method. Detailed below.
The evidence review is credited in full against a board engagement commissioned within ninety days. It tells you whether your evidence holds, not whether the person can carry the seat — that is what the engagement is for.
Two candidates, six weeks, all three deliverables. The number is built rather than negotiated, and every driver is on the table before you decide.
Public companies. Public-company engagements are scoped and priced separately, and run eight to ten weeks rather than six. The method is the same. The build is not: counsel coordination, committee process, a wider stakeholder set, and a file written to a production standard. Ask and we will send the build before you decide.
The candidate set is fixed in writing at kickoff, because that is the driver that moves the work most and the one most likely to grow quietly once a diligence engagement is under way. A candidate added after that point is a separate engagement with its own number, agreed before any work on them begins. What we will not do is revise a quoted fee upward in the middle of a running engagement. Expenses at cost.
What it sits against. A board hiring a CEO commits several million dollars in compensation before equity, and bets the next three years of the company on the choice. The diligence is a rounding error against the commitment it informs.
Where this sits. A transaction already funds three diligence workstreams, each bought from a different specialist and each priced without argument. We do not do those three. We do the fourth.
The first three are specialist work and we would not pretend otherwise. Our point is what happens to the fourth: boards and buyers commission the other three without argument, then take the question that often carries the most risk on impressions and the references a candidate hands over. That is the gap. The fee is set against the other things you are already paying to have read properly.
Priced this way for a reason. Billing by the hour would give us a financial interest in how long the work runs. We would rather share the interest you actually have: the right leader in the seat, a business that becomes more valuable because of it, and a decision that still looks right in three years.
The deal engagement · your deal calendar
You are deciding whether to commit. The question is the person the thesis rests on.
Legal reads the documents. Quality of earnings reads the numbers. Commercial diligence reads the market. The person the whole thing depends on rarely gets the same treatment.
A company where the leader is the reason it works. An emerging league or a team. A catalog. An artist, an athlete, or a creator whose name is the business. Where the operator is the asset, the operator is the diligence.
The same method on a deal clock: fewer criteria, a tighter reference set, and findings sent as they land rather than in one package at the end. Built to finish inside an exclusivity window rather than to run past one.
Where the asset is a person or a person's work, the rights question and the person question travel together, and both get read.
The deal clock is assumed and carries no premium. Quoted against your diligence calendar before we start, and fixed from that point.
It is the fourth workstream on a deal that already funds three. Where the thesis rests on one person, it is frequently the one carrying the most risk and the only one nobody priced.
Sent as they land, in the form your deal team already works in. Every finding shows how strong the evidence behind it is.
How many genuinely separate sources sit behind each finding, and what independent evidence the clock did not allow.
Material that belongs with your lawyers rather than in the data room. Kept complete, and never trimmed.
Independence is either a set of commitments that cost something or a word on a website. These cost something, and they are in every engagement letter.
No investment position. Gannett.Partners holds no equity, debt, or economic interest in any company it evaluates, and takes none afterward. Where we do hold a position, in a company we co-built, we do not evaluate it.
No forward commercial conversation until transmittal. Further work is not discussed, proposed, or priced while diligence is running. The order is the safeguard.
Continuing advisory sits with the board. Executive coaching, operating advisory, board consulting, and rights and valuation work are the forms it takes. Where any of it follows the diligence, it is agreed with the board rather than with the person who was evaluated, and scoped and priced on its own.
Findings are not negotiable. How things are framed, ordered and emphasized is yours to direct. What the evidence says is not. Any request to change a finding is put in writing, and the full version is kept with your lawyers.
Structural facts are named. A loan to the company, a controlling stake, a board seat, or a separate negotiation with a candidate is stated plainly wherever it affects the work. A fact found later looks like something hidden. The same fact stated up front is rigor.
The Source Map counts how many genuinely separate sources sit behind your evidence on a person. Seven questions, then a working map. Nothing you enter leaves your browser, and there is no signup.
Most boards find eleven accounts collapse into two or three. If that is what you find, the conversation is worth having.
Three more tools run the same discipline on the asset rather than the person: the convergence map, the rights stack, and the minority stake. All free, none gated.
