Antony Draper Advisory works with founders of established £500k–£10m businesses that have a team or leadership structure but still rely too heavily on the founder for decisions, standards, delivery and momentum.
When the work is useful
Your leaders have responsibility but still need your approval to act. Delivery depends on your chasing. Standards drop when you step away. Growth is making the business harder to run.
You and your leadership team are ready to examine how work actually happens and change the responsibilities, decisions and behaviours that keep returning to you.
What we diagnose
Where decisions wait, who has authority and what triggers escalation.
How standards are understood, how commitments are followed through and who owns the outcome.
Where information, cross-team handovers or competing priorities make founder intervention necessary.
Diagnose
Identify where and why the business still depends on the founder. Trace decisions, delivery, standards and accountability through the real work.
Design
Clarify decision rights, accountability, standards and leadership ownership. Give leaders the authority and information to own their outcomes.
Embed
Work with the founder and leadership team to make the new operating behaviours consistent. Test them in the business and adjust where responsibility still returns to the founder.
Work with the founder and the team
The work connects the founder’s expectations with the conditions leaders need to deliver: explicit authority, observable standards, useful information and clear accountability.
Changes may include clearer decision thresholds, ownership across team boundaries, delivery reviews and an operating rhythm that gives the founder visibility without requiring constant intervention.
The scope of an engagement follows the business’s needs and is agreed through conversation.
The intended outcome
Decisions are made at the correct level.
Leaders take genuine ownership of outcomes.
Standards remain consistent without constant founder intervention.
Delivery does not depend on the founder chasing it.
Growth creates organisational capacity rather than more work for the founder.
The founder can focus on direction, value creation and the decisions that genuinely require them.
Begin with the assessment
Use the Founder Independence Assessment to identify the current constraints before deciding whether advisory work is the right next step.