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 a record that holds up if the decision is challenged later. Six weeks. Fixed scope. Fixed fee.
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 agreed with the board in writing before any evidence is gathered. The file shows that order.
Criteria built from the company’s next eighteen months rather than a generic competency model. Each director gives their top three priorities, which takes ten minutes rather than an afternoon. The bar is approved in writing.
We walk the board through the findings, then hand over the file. At that point the diligence is closed. Anything surfacing 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. A written concern can be discoverable if a decision is later challenged, so every document is written expecting to be read that way.
A board choosing who runs the company is already paying to have several things read properly.
Those get commissioned without argument. The question that often carries the most risk, whether this person can actually carry the seat, is answered on impressions and the references a candidate hands over. That is the gap, and the fee is set against the other things you are already paying for.
Two candidates. Six weeks. Board deck, findings appendix, counsel file.
The fee is built from named drivers rather than quoted from a range: the number of candidates, the scope of the work, and how the engagement is retained. It is fixed in writing before any work begins. Ask and we will send you the build before you decide anything. Where privilege matters, we can be engaged through your counsel.
The candidate set is fixed in writing at kickoff, because it is the driver that moves the work most and the one most likely to grow quietly once an 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.
Public companies. Scoped and priced separately, and 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.
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, and a decision that still looks right in three years.
We turn all three down, and we will say so on the first call rather than after a proposal.
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. Existing direct positions, companies we co-built, board seats, and every company held by the venture funds we are invested in sit on a standing exclusion list and cannot be engaged. The list is provided in writing at first contact, before scope.
No commercial conversation until delivery. Further work is not discussed, proposed, or priced with any party to the decision while diligence is running, including the firm that retained us. The order is the safeguard.
Continuing advisory sits with the client of record. Executive coaching for the leader the board appoints, operating advisory, board consulting, and rights and valuation work are the forms it takes. Where any of it follows the diligence, it is agreed after findings are delivered, with the party who retained us 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.
We turn down three kinds of work. Search. Confirmation. And any engagement where the diligence cannot change the decision. The exclusions cost the firm work, which is the point.
All six commitments appear in every engagement letter. No fees are shared with counsel in either direction, and nothing of value is paid or accepted for a referral.
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.
