Vetting Genuine Distance
The seven criteria from Chapter 9, in checklist form. They derive entirely from published research and statute, and they hold for any advisor of any size. An advisor who clears all seven can supply Distance. One who doesn’t is selling something else.
Criterion 1 — Follow the revenue model
A firm paid by time and materials on a finders-minders-grinders pyramid — partners who win the work, managers who mind it, junior staff who grind through it — profits when scope grows; its advice is tangled up with its billing. Ask how the fee changes if the recommended work grows.
(Maister, 1993.)
Criterion 2 — Who actually does the thinking
Distance is pattern recognition across many prior organizations; a first-year analyst has no such library. Name the individuals doing the diagnostic work and vet their personal case history, not the firm’s.
(Maister, 1993.)
Criterion 3 — A documented willingness to kill
Pushing back only adds value when the person doing it can actually say no, and pushback that’s just for show doesn’t count. Ask for named instances of “don’t do this.”
(Schwenk & Cosier, 1980; Schwenk, 1990; Nemeth et al., 2001.)
Criterion 4 — Independence from implementation revenue
Advice that feeds downstream build fees is the auditor-consulting conflict in new clothes — the same problem that once let accounting firms rubber-stamp books they were also paid to fix — biased in good faith, and disclosure doesn’t fix it. Diagnosis and implementation should be separately contractable and separately terminable — you can hire and fire each piece on its own.
(Sarbanes-Oxley §201; Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu & Bazerman, 2006.)
Criterion 5 — Tenure and rotation
Distance decays with familiarity — measurably, after about a year and a half. Require an explicit engagement horizon — a clear end date — or rotation plan; an advisor embedded for years is an insider with an invoice.
(Katz & Allen, 1982; SOX §203’s five-year partner rotation as the institutional precedent.)
Criterion 6 — An outside reference class, not your own data returned to you
Judgment improves when your case is placed alongside a wide range of comparable cases from elsewhere — what researchers call an outside reference class. A deliverable synthesizing your own interviews and metrics has added zero Distance; demand cross-client, cross-industry base rates — the plain track record of how similar situations actually turned out.
(Kahneman & Lovallo, 1993.)
Criterion 7 — Payment invariant to the answer
This means what they get paid doesn’t change no matter what they conclude. A fixed diagnostic fee that pays the same for “go,” “go differently,” or “stop” is the only structure in which “stop” is affordable to say. Contingent pricing, success fees, and land-and-expand pricing (start small, then keep growing the contract) all make one answer more profitable than another.
(Kunda, 1990; Babcock & Loewenstein, 1997.)
If you want help running a specific candidate against these seven, that is one of the things the conversation offered at the back of this book is for.
Distance is the one input on the Five-Question Screen that is disqualifying on its own. A redesign with no real outside perspective does not proceed until that gap is closed.
How to use it: Run a specific candidate against all seven. An advisor who clears all seven can supply Distance. One who doesn’t is selling something else. Print this page →