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  <title><![CDATA[Ivory Summit Reach]]></title>
  <link>https://ivorysummitreach.com/</link>
  <description><![CDATA[Ivory Summit Reach offers strategic consulting for organisations at a turning point. Independent, written, and specific. Based in London, working internationally.]]></description>
  <language>en</language>
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    <title><![CDATA[When Does an Organisation Actually Need External Strategy Counsel?]]></title>
    <link>https://ivorysummitreach.com/notes/when-to-bring-in-external-strategy-counsel.html</link>
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    <description><![CDATA[Most leadership teams are capable of good strategic thinking. The question is not whether they can do it, but whether the conditions inside the organisation allow them to. Internal politics, proximity to the problem, and the pressure to appear decisive all work against the kind of clear-eyed analysis that significant decisions require. External counsel is not a substitute for internal thinking. It is a way of creating the conditions for it.]]></description>
    <pubDate>2026-04-10</pubDate>
  </item>
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    <title><![CDATA[How to Read Board Papers as a Critical Independent Director]]></title>
    <link>https://ivorysummitreach.com/notes/how-to-read-board-papers-critically.html</link>
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    <description><![CDATA[Board papers are produced under time pressure, by people who are accountable to the board they are writing for. That structural tension shapes what appears in the document and, more importantly, what does not. Reading board papers well is a skill that takes practice, and it is one of the more underrated competencies in governance.]]></description>
    <pubDate>2026-02-18</pubDate>
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    <title><![CDATA[Founder Transition: What the Planning Documents Leave Out]]></title>
    <link>https://ivorysummitreach.com/notes/founder-transition-what-no-one-tells-you.html</link>
    <guid>https://ivorysummitreach.com/notes/founder-transition-what-no-one-tells-you.html</guid>
    <description><![CDATA[Succession planning documents are good at covering the structural questions: who takes over which role, what the governance looks like, how the handover is timed. They are less good at the questions that actually make transitions difficult. Those questions are personal, and they tend to surface in the middle of the process rather than at the beginning.]]></description>
    <pubDate>2025-12-05</pubDate>
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  <item>
    <title><![CDATA[When Your Organisational Structure Is Fighting Your Strategy]]></title>
    <link>https://ivorysummitreach.com/notes/organisational-design-when-structure-fights-strategy.html</link>
    <guid>https://ivorysummitreach.com/notes/organisational-design-when-structure-fights-strategy.html</guid>
    <description><![CDATA[Strategy documents tend to be written as if the organisation that will implement them is a neutral instrument. It is not. Every organisation has a structure that was designed for a previous version of its strategy, and that structure shapes what is easy, what is hard, and what is effectively impossible. When the structure and the strategy are misaligned, the strategy loses.]]></description>
    <pubDate>2025-10-14</pubDate>
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  <item>
    <title><![CDATA[Pre-Investment Readiness: What Serious Investors Actually Look For]]></title>
    <link>https://ivorysummitreach.com/notes/pre-investment-readiness-what-investors-actually-check.html</link>
    <guid>https://ivorysummitreach.com/notes/pre-investment-readiness-what-investors-actually-check.html</guid>
    <description><![CDATA[Most founders preparing for an investment round focus on the pitch: the narrative, the financials, the market size. These things matter. But experienced investors spend a significant portion of their diligence on questions that the pitch deck does not answer, and that many founders have not thought carefully about. Addressing those questions before the round opens is one of the more valuable things a business can do.]]></description>
    <pubDate>2025-08-22</pubDate>
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