— CAPABILITIES: Founder / CEO & Board Advisory
The decisions that define your organization's future
deserve more than a transactional advisor.
Founders, CEOs, and board members operate in a narrow world — surrounded by people who have a stake in the outcome, an agenda of their own, or simply a reluctance to deliver difficult news.
What most senior leaders lack, and privately know they lack, is a seasoned, experienced counselor who will engage candidly on the full range of operational, strategic, and talent challenges they face — with no agenda except the right outcome for the organization. That is what this practice exists to provide.
— Who is This For?
We work with leaders who cannot afford to get this wrong.
This practice is designed for a specific situation: you are facing decisions that are consequential enough to warrant genuine independent counsel — not a vendor relationship, not a process engagement, but a trusted advisor who has seen this kind of decision play out across hundreds of organizations and will tell you what they actually think. We serve:
Boards of Directors
CEO succession planning, director recruitment, governance advisory, and independent counsel on leadership risk at the board level.
CEOs & Senior Executives
Strategic counsel on team composition, succession, organizational design, and the leadership decisions that directly determine organizational outcomes.
Founders & Owner-Operators
Advisory for founders navigating transition from operational to strategic roles — including succession planning, professionalization of the leadership team, and preparing the organization for its next stage.
Private Equity Sponsors
Leadership advisory for portfolio companies at critical growth or transition stages — pre-close assessment, post-acquisition team building, and performance intervention when leadership is the limiting factor.
— What We Advise On
The inflection points where independent counsel matters most.
1. CEO succession planning
A structured, objective process for identifying and developing internal successors — or managing an external search when internal options are not adequate. We help boards and CEOs approach succession as a strategic process, not a reactive one.
2. Board composition & effectiveness
Independent counsel on board structure, the specific capabilities and perspectives your board needs at this stage of the organization's development, and director recruitment when gaps exist. We can also assess the effectiveness of existing board practices and governance.
3. Founder transition
Confidential advisory for founders moving from operational leadership to board roles, ownership without management responsibility, or full exit. These transitions are organizationally complex and emotionally charged — and they benefit from an advisor who has navigated them before.
4. Strategic inflection point counsel
Independent advisory during M&A, restructuring, leadership crisis, or major strategic pivots — when the decisions being made will determine the organization's trajectory for years, and the people inside the organization have competing interests and incomplete perspectives.
5. Senior team assessment & composition
We assess how a leader builds alignment, manages dissent, and drives collective performance — because individual leadership capability is only relevant if it translates into team and organizational outcomes.
— How We Work
A small number of clients. Complete attention. Real candor.
We take on a deliberately limited number of advisory relationships at any time. This is not a scalable product line. It is a relationship — and relationships of the kind that actually change organizational outcomes require genuine investment of attention, judgment, and trust.
Independent perspective
We have no stake in any particular outcome except the right one for your organization. We will tell you what we think — including things that are inconvenient.
30 years of pattern recognition
We have seen these situations — succession crises, founder conflicts, board dysfunction, leadership failures — across hundreds of organizations. That experience is what you are engaging.
Complete confidentiality
Advisory relationships of this kind require absolute discretion. Every engagement is strictly confidential — with principals, not teams.
Senior-led, always
Rob Andrews and senior partners conduct these engagements directly. There is no delegation to junior staff in relationships of this consequence.
— Published Perspective
If execution risk has ever surprised your board, this article explains why.
Boards seldom face surprises in strategy. Execution is where they get stunned. Rob Andrews writes for National Association of Corporate Directors' Directorship Magazine on why that pattern is so persistent — and what boards can do to see it coming.
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"Allen Austin's process is unlike anything we had experienced in executive search. They understood our culture before they ever presented a candidate — and the leader they placed has exceeded every expectation we set."
— John Smith, CEO and Chairman, Manufacturing Company Inc.
— FIND A TRUSTED ADVISOR
The right advisory relationship begins with an honest conversation.
Tell us what you're facing. We'll tell you candidly whether and how we can help — and what that engagement would look like.