NICK AYTON.
Advisory

Diagnosis first. Then a plan you can actually run.

No 200-slide deck. No team of graduates on your site for nine months. I find what is actually wrong, tell you plainly, and stay long enough to see it fixed. Every engagement produces something you can take into a board meeting and defend.

The engagements
Free · 10 minutes

The Slow Bleed Check

Self-scoring. Start here if you're not sure it's worth a conversation yet.

Twelve questions against the twelve most common bleed points. You get a severity reading, the three areas to look at first, and an honest answer on whether a full diagnostic is justified.

Take the Check →
No cost
No sign-up
Instant result
2–3 weeks · Fixed fee

The CCV Diagnostic

The entry engagement. Low risk, high signal, defined end point.

I establish your actual Cash Conversion Velocity from source data, map where value is trapped across Order-to-Cash, and identify the constraints that are costing you the most. You end up with a set of numbers that are yours — built from definitions you set, not inherited from a board pack.

  • CCV baseline and the Three Gaps analysis
  • Order-to-Cash flow map with the blockers named
  • Read of the operating model — designed or emerged
  • Board-ready findings document and a one-hour walkthrough
  • A ranked list of what to fix, in what order, and why
Fixed fee
Defined scope
Board-ready output

UK · UAE · remote
Price on application

Finding the Truth

Insight, visibility and control. Exclusive access, and the reason clients stop guessing.

Reading the room is one thing. Reading the whole company is another. Unsupervised machine learning applied to your organisation's communication networks — no rules, no keywords, no theory about what to look for. It surfaces what is exceptional on its own terms, and produces results that are impossible to achieve any other way.

  • Where value is actually leaking, not where people say it is
  • The real organisation — who decides, who is load-bearing, who has quietly left
  • Which teams genuinely work well together, and who disrupts the people around them
  • Relationships cooling long before they show commercially
  • Fraud, theft, and IP or value being taken, corrupted or blocked
How it works →
Price on application
Scoped on data volume
and processing

Snapshot, or ongoing
early warning
100 days

The Get-Well Programme

Diagnosis into movement. The quarter that changes the trajectory.

The recovery engagement. We remove the biggest constraints, reset priorities so that every function, role and person is linked to one thing — their contribution to making the machine run faster, better and cheaper — and rebuild velocity against a measured baseline.

  • Weeks 1–2: establish visibility and your own numbers
  • Weeks 3–6: remove the top constraints in the flow
  • Weeks 7–12: reset the operating rhythm and metrics
  • Weeks 13–14: re-measure CCV against baseline and hand over
  • Fortnightly working sessions with you and the leadership team
Monthly retainer
Measured against
a CCV baseline

Requires a
diagnostic first
1–2 days · Leadership team

The Field Guide Workshop

The tools, run live, against your own numbers. In the room, together.

The fastest way to get a leadership team seeing the same business. We work the diagnostics and calculators from The Slow Bleed against real data, surface where the team disagrees about the facts, and leave with an agreed picture and an agreed first move.

  • Know Yourself / Read the Room — how each of your team is wired
  • Live CCV and Order-to-Cash mapping on your data
  • The 80/20 truth: which customers and deals actually pay
  • Every attendee leaves with a copy of the field guide and Vault access
Day rate
On site or off site
6–20 people

Also runs as an
offsite keynote
plus workshop
Monthly · 1:1

The Undefended CEO

Private counsel. No agenda, no audience, no politics.

For CEOs who need somewhere to think out loud with someone who has held the role and is not on the payroll. We test the decision before you take it to the board, read the room together, and keep you on the front foot.

  • Two scheduled sessions a month, plus access between them
  • Board pack pre-reads and pressure-testing
  • Straight answers, including the ones nobody in your building will give you
  • Complete confidentiality — this arrangement doesn't appear anywhere
Monthly retainer
Minimum six months
Limited places

Video or in person
How it works

Five steps. No theatre.

Every engagement follows the same shape, whether it runs for three weeks or a hundred days. You always know what happens next and what you get at the end of it.

One · 30 minutes

The conversation

You tell me what's bothering you. I tell you where I'd look first, and whether I'm the right person. No pitch, no deck, no obligation. Some of these end with me pointing you somewhere else.

Two · Week one

Scope and access

We agree the questions worth answering, the data needed to answer them, and who I speak to. Where interaction analysis is in scope, that is set up here so the picture is ready when the numbers are.

Three · Weeks 1–3

Finding the truth

Your real Cash Conversion Velocity, measured from source. Where value sits trapped in Order-to-Cash. And, where commissioned, the interaction picture that explains why.

Four

The findings

Board-ready, written plainly, ranked by what it costs you. Delivered in a working session rather than emailed. You will not agree with all of it, and that is the point.

Five · 100 days

The recovery

If you want it. Remove the constraints, reset the operating rhythm, re-measure against the baseline we established. Fortnightly, with you and the leadership team.

Throughout

Your numbers, not mine

Everything is built to definitions you set, traced to source, and handed over. When I leave, the measurement stays and you can run it without me.

Fit

Who this is for.

CEOs, founders and owners of businesses turning over roughly £5m to £500m, where the numbers still look survivable but the feeling in the building says otherwise.

Also: chairs and boards who want an independent read before they act, and investors who need a commercial diagnosis that isn't written by the people who caused the problem.

Not a fit

I'll say so early if it isn't.

  • You want validation for a decision you've already made
  • You need a strategy deck for a fundraise, not a fix
  • The organisation isn't willing to look at real numbers
  • You want a body on site for twelve months
Next step

Thirty minutes. No pitch.

Tell me what's bothering you and I'll tell you where I'd look first. If I'm not the right person, I'll say that too.