Plank Speck Consulting

What is your approach to helping clients identify and solve key challenges? We diagnose the business with data before we walk in the room, build the complete blueprint before they see it, and spend one day making every decision …who owns what, what gets measured, and what happens Monday

How do you tailor your coaching or consulting style to different industries? Science backed diagnosis on the front end but also my extensive experience working across 20+ industries.

What are the most common misconceptions about consulting? Many of the misconceptions are actually legit concerns that the consulting industry has not addressed. For example, that consultants deliver recommendations instead of results, charge for time instead of outcomes, and leave you with a strategy deck nobody executes … because most of them do.

How do you measure the success of your client engagements? Two ways. On the business side we assess did the org design get decided, is the scorecard being used, are priorities completing, did the founder’s role actually change. On the people side we assess does the founder know their stress patterns well enough to catch them before they cost the team, does every leader understand whether they’re in the right seat based on data not tenure, and is the founder’s recovery architecture actually protecting what the performance system draws from. The assessments aren’t a nice-to-have warmup. They’re the diagnostic that tells us why the business is stuck in ways the P&L never will because a founder whose unconscious motivator is to be needed will hold onto every decision no matter how good the org chart looks, and you’ll never see that in a spreadsheet.

What trends are influencing the future of consulting and coaching? Three shifts are happening at once. Clients are done paying for advice they have to implement themselves, they want the system installed and running before the consultant leaves. AI is making the analytical work that used to take weeks producible in hours, which means the consultants who are still billing for analysis time are selling something a machine does better and faster. And the market is splitting, mega-firms at the top, sharp specialists at the bottom, and everyone in the middle getting squeezed because they’re not big enough to compete on scale or specific enough to compete on depth. The coaches and consultants who survive this are the ones who own a diagnostic, deliver a measurable outcome, and leave behind infrastructure the client actually uses after the engagement ends. Everyone else is selling conversations.

What’s the most rewarding part of your work? Seeing people get free from the emotional burden causing them to be the ceiling of their own business growth

What skills do you think are essential for future consultants or coaches? Understanding fully the business while fully understanding the human behind the business.