A small portfolio of continuing advisory relationships.

At most five clients each reserve roughly 10% of my working attention: about two days of direct work each month, averaged across the quarter, together with standing access for brief questions and rapid interpretation when something develops.

I also undertake a limited number of focused assignments, briefings, facilitated sessions, and other advisory work where a continuing relationship is unnecessary or premature.

In one sentence

We retain Proper Tools so that, when something unfamiliar crosses technical, regulatory, and organisational boundaries, we already have an independent adviser who knows our context, has no stake in any particular answer, and can help us work out what it means and reach a defensible decision sooner.

The standing relationship

You are not buying hours. You are buying continuity of context, independent judgement, and an established first call.

Over time, I learn the people, systems, history, open questions, and decision culture involved. I spend less time reconstructing context and more time working on what matters now.

The point of continuity is not to preserve my original conclusion. It is to preserve enough context that conclusions can change without reconstructing the whole problem.

What the retainer is for

• Early interpretation. A prompt independent read on a technical or regulatory development, an incident, a supplier claim, or something else that has changed.
• Decision framing. Clear options, trade-offs, and language suited to the people who must decide.
• Independent challenge. An accountable perspective outside the reporting hierarchy, able to test assumptions without requiring any particular person or team to be wrong.
• Orientation. Help finding the relevant standards, institutions, specialist communities, prior work, and genuinely open questions.
• Preparation. Following open questions, doing the reading, and testing assumptions before urgency removes the room to think.

Sometimes the work is testing a supplier’s claim. Sometimes it is naming the mismatch between two teams who are answering different questions. Sometimes it is turning a half-formed concern into an owned decision. Sometimes it is simply helping someone see the choices more clearly.

The quiet months

Nothing is on fire. Good.

That is when context gets built: open questions followed, assumptions pressure-tested, relationships understood, and the reading done that urgency always postpones. It is part of the work.

Terms of the relationship

The retainer buys continuity and priority, not a bank of unused days. The reserved time is used wherever it is most useful within the agreed scope: analysis, advice, preparation, briefings, or conversations with colleagues and suppliers.

Substantial new work is scoped separately.

At the outset we agree:

• the questions, decisions, and themes worth holding in view;
• the people I should know and the boundaries I should respect;
• how we communicate between scheduled sessions;
• what falls within the relationship;
• what requires a separate scope;
• what a useful first quarter would look like.

Fees

Retainers are priced at senior advisory rates. The fee is agreed directly and stated clearly before either side commits. Standard MSA, mutual NDA, and procurement documentation are available on request.

Five relationships, by design

At full capacity, five retainers at roughly 10% each cap paid client work at half my available time. The remainder is reserved for standards, research, and community work across ITU-T, FIRST, IEEE, and adjacent public-interest efforts.

That is not spare capacity waiting to be sold. It is part of the structure of the practice, and one reason the advisory work remains close to developing technical and institutional questions.

For clients, the ceiling is a guarantee against dilution. I will not keep adding accounts until everyone owns a thinner slice of a stretched consultant. Five means five.

A mutual trial

New relationships usually begin with a three-month trial: long enough to learn whether I can become genuinely useful, short enough that neither side needs to pretend certainty before the work has proved itself.

The trial does not need to convert. Neither side should prolong a relationship that has not earned its place.

Either party may stop at the end of the trial without drama. If the relationship proves useful, it continues month to month.

Boundaries

This is not 24/7 incident response, staff augmentation, an outsourced CISO function, or a promise of unlimited deliverables.

When a matter grows beyond the retainer, I will say so plainly and propose a separate scope—or point you to someone better suited.

Other ways to work

Not every question needs a continuing relationship. Proper Tools also undertakes a limited number of focused assignments with a clear purpose, timetable, and fee agreed in advance.

That may include:

• focused analysis and decision memos on technical, organisational, or supplier questions;
• executive and board briefings;
• facilitated working sessions;
• standards, policy, regulatory, and institutional coordination advice.

Obligations under NIS2, DORA, or the Cyber Resilience Act are among the reasons a bounded question like this may land on someone’s desk.

Some assignments stand alone. Others provide a practical way to begin working together before deciding whether continuing advice would be useful.

See selected work and credentials →

Why the public work matters

My standards and public-interest work across ITU-T, FIRST, IEEE, and adjacent communities is part of the advisory capability, not time away from it.

Those forums are where implementation constraints, weak signals, institutional gaps, and coordination problems often become visible before they settle into ordinary management information.

Retainer clients do not buy privileged access, confidential material, or influence over public processes. No client relationship determines what I contribute to them.

What a client receives is advice from someone already participating in those conversations, able to translate what is public and shareable into the client’s own context.

Proper Tools is structured so that paid work supports open research and coordination, while field reality disciplines the public work and the public work keeps the practice honest.

Bring me the question as it currently exists.

You do not need to arrive with a finished brief. Tell me what is happening, who is involved, and what decision or deadline is approaching.

I would rather tell you plainly whether this is a fit than sell you something that is not.

I will tell you directly whether I think I can help, what shape the work might take, and what it would cost. If I am not the right person, I will point you somewhere better when I can.

Someone handed you a card with a code word?

Then the hour is real: no charge, no pitch, exactly as the card says. Get in touch, quote the code word, and tell me two things—the problem, and the decision riding on it. That is all I need to come ready.

If there is more in it afterwards, we’ll talk. If not, the hour stands on its own—which is rather the point of it.