💼 300k-500k JPY/month for 1 day a week: What is a Consultant Advisor? ── Company B Vol. 1
Introduction to the Consultant Advisor role ── Company B
Hello, this is Roel.
Today, I would like to write about an initiative I am involved in as a "Consultant Advisor" for a certain startup.
Actually, this topic is directly related to a question I am often asked myself.
"Roel, what kind of work do you actually do as a Consultant Advisor?"
I want to answer this question as realistically as possible. To do that, this time I will talk about the case of Company B, where I am involved as a consultant. I want to share candidly the process of how I face and support the
organizational challenges
unique to startups.
Business or Organization ── Where is the support area?
As I touched upon briefly in the article below,
this client is supported in both the "organizational" areas of culture and
systems.
💼 The job of a Consultant Advisor
In the previous article, I wrote about the kind of support I provide at Company A, which is in the retail industry.
There, the focus was on how to move the "business side," such as the market and products—talk directly linked to the front lines of generating sales.
This time, the theme is the exact opposite. The stage is Company B, a venture company. This is a so-called "fast-growing" company that develops digital-focused entertainment services. 💡
They have finished their Series B funding round, and sales are growing rapidly.
However, the organizational condition is the exact opposite. Even though they have excellent executive talent and academic elites, the staff is exhausted and loyalty is low.
It was a typical state of "business is going well, but the organization is at its limit."
The request to me is simple.
👉 "I want you to do something about this organization."
⏱️ 30-45 minutes once a week, an extremely intense meeting
The style of support is very standardized.
The CEO is busy and can only spare 30 to 45 minutes a week.
Within that time,
Things you are currently struggling with
Things that must be solved
Things that are not progressing
I identify all of these at once, spend a week thinking about them, and present solutions
the next time we meet—this is the cycle.
Honestly, being able to talk directly to the CEO and handle the organization's most critical issues in such a short time is
extremely efficient. 🌍
Sometimes meetings are canceled because the CEO is on an overseas business trip, but
if you calculate it by hourly rate, it works out to an
outrageous compensation of around 100,000 JPY per hour.
🗻 What I first tackled when faced with a mountain of issues
Company B was simply full of problems.
Loyalty is uniformly low
When tasks come down from the CEO, people push them onto each other asking, "Who is going to do this?"
High performance, but they cannot be easily fired
There is no culture of approval or praise, so motivation does not rise
On the other hand, the business is doing great. That is precisely why "strengthening the organization" was
the biggest lever for further increasing this company's sales.
The first thing I did was get an organizational chart and conduct thorough 1-on-1s with the leadership team and
key personnel. 📝
I extracted the organizational bottlenecks and clarified where we should strike first.
⚙️ The "root problem" of labor-intensiveness
What became apparent was the deep-rooted problem of a labor-intensive structure.
Although the business is a digital service, the reality is that it relies too heavily on human labor, and the more sales grow, the more the burden on members jumps. This was the same structure I experienced
during my time at an advertising agency.
Unless this structure is changed before organizational improvement, there will be no fundamental solution.
That is why I initially stepped slightly into the business side and proposed AI utilization and efficiency improvements. 🤖
By appointing someone in charge to move things forward, the improvements finally started to take hold.
🔥 The difficult challenge of building a culture
The next theme is culture. Honestly, this is the most difficult part. It takes time, and
I am not an expert myself. However, I have experienced seeing a strong culture firsthand
in organizations I have been a part of in the past.
So, I am proceeding by trial and error based on that.
The realization I have is simple.
Make the percentage of people with high loyalty the majority.
If this can be achieved, the organization will accelerate in a positive direction.
*At the very least, the companies with strong cultures that I have been a part of operated on this mechanism.
It is not just about the executive layer saying, "We are a good company"; it spreads to the leader layer and new employees, and is shared with the same level of enthusiasm down to the lower layers.
Conversely, if loyalty is low, negative words like "You know, our company..." will spread.
The strong companies I have seen in the past were exactly like that, with executives who were "clumps of loyalty" passing that heat from the top down. I believe this is the essence of culture building. 💪
Next time, I will delve deeper into how I solve this culture building and other heavy organizational issues.
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