Second Opinion Before You Fire Your Investment Manager
A calm, independent voice that slows the room down long enough for the human truth to surface, before the process turns clinical and expensive.
Most institutions do not fire an investment manager. They fire the feeling that the story still holds.
The numbers matter, of course. But the first crack is rarely a spreadsheet. It is a sentence said with a slight pause. A board member who used to nod now looks away. A CIO who once spoke with ease now sounds defensive. A question that used to feel curious now feels sharp.
Performance disappoints. A key person leaves. Markets rotate. The committee changes. Confidence drains out of the room the way heat drains out of a house in winter. Nobody announces it. Everyone feels it.
And then, because institutions dislike ambiguity, the next move arrives almost automatically: call the consultant, run the process, pick a replacement, regain the feeling of control.
That can be sensible. It can also be premature. Transitions are expensive, disruptive, and complex. They cost money you can count and time you cannot reclaim. They also carry a quieter price: the institution learning, once again, that discomfort gets converted into activity.
This work lives one step earlier. It is not anti-consultant. It is pro-clarity.
Why internal feels human, until it doesn’t
Inside an institution, the conversation is still human. People know the history. They remember what was promised, what was misunderstood, what was tolerated because it was convenient, what was ignored because everyone was tired.
They also know the unspoken things: who is nearing the end of their term, who is risk-averse in public but bold in private, who feels embarrassed, who feels blamed.
Then consultants arrive and something often happens. The conversation becomes clinical.
Clinical is not the same as rigorous. Clinical can be a way to avoid the real question. The language improves. The temperature drops. The discomfort gets converted into a timeline. Everyone gets busy. The institution gets to feel that it is “doing governance.”
And yet the human truth, which was the real driver of the termination impulse in the first place, remains unexamined. It simply goes underground and reappears later, usually as regret.
This service is designed to keep the conversation human long enough to become honest, without becoming messy.
Who this is for
Investment committees and investment staff who want to think clearly before engaging a consultant-led termination process: pension plans. Endowments and foundations. Insurers. Public sector funds. Charities and universities. Family offices with committee governance.
Any group where “we might fire them” has entered the room, even if it has not entered the minutes.
When it helps
This fits moments that sound like:
“We are about to put them on watch.”
“We have lost confidence but cannot quite explain why.”
“Performance is ugly and the board is restless.”
“A key person left and we don’t know what that means yet.”
“We are being pushed to do something.”
“A consultant search is being proposed and we want to be sure we are not outsourcing our thinking.”
It also helps when the committee is being very polite. Polite committees can make fast mistakes.
What this is and what it isn’t
This is a structured pause. A short engagement that creates space for internal clarity.
It is not a report-writing exercise.
It is not a shadow consultant search.
It is not a pre-written recommendation dressed up as neutrality.
It is not an attempt to take the decision away from the institution.
The goal is simple: slow the process down long enough to identify what is actually broken and what decision you are truly being asked to make.
The question underneath almost every termination impulse
Before any decision, four possibilities are separated deliberately:
Manager problem
Mandate problem
Measurement problem
Governance problem
Institutions terminate managers for all four reasons. They tend to admit to only one.
A manager may be fine while the mandate is wrong. The mandate may be fine while the benchmark is wrong. The benchmark may be fine while expectations were never realistic. And sometimes everything is technically fine while the room has lost trust, and nobody wants to say the word “trust” because it sounds soft.
It is not soft. It is governance.
How the work unfolds
Step one
A short conversation with the key decision-makers to understand the current temperature in the room and the story the institution is telling itself.
Step two
One or two structured sessions with staff and committee leadership. The purpose is not consensus. The purpose is clarity.
This is where the real work happens: naming what everyone senses, distinguishing signal from noise, and identifying what information would actually change the decision.
Step three
The institution chooses its next move with its eyes open.
Sometimes the next move is not termination. It is watch discipline, tighter internal expectations, cleaner communication with the manager, or a mandate adjustment that reflects reality.
Sometimes the next move is termination. In that case, the value is not “a recommendation.” The value is that the institution can enter a consultant process with a clean mandate and a clear conscience, rather than urgency and vague dissatisfaction.
Either way, you stop the reflex of converting discomfort into motion.
The kinds of questions that keep it human and make it rigorous
Not gotcha questions. Not jargon. The real ones.
What exactly is broken: performance, people, process, fit, communication, expectations, or trust?
Are we reacting to underperformance, or to expected tracking error in an unpleasant regime?
What do we believe becomes true immediately if we terminate?
What risk are we truly taking if we stay?
Are we judging the manager, or judging the discomfort of the last year?
If we hire the “opposite” style, what new risks are we volunteering for?
If we call a consultant tomorrow, what question are we actually asking them to answer?
What would we want to be able to say, without squirming, two years from now?
These questions do not slow the process down for the sake of slowness. They slow it down to prevent expensive theatre.
A conversation the manager can actually have
There are moments when the manager also needs a human conversation, not a performance.
Under stress, managers can become polished and careful. Committees can become pointed and impatient. Both are understandable. Neither is helpful.
Because I speak the language of CFAs and institutional governance, I can press for clarity without turning it into a confrontation. That often reveals whether the issue is capability, fit, communication, internal expectations, or something more structural.
When the manager senses they are not being auditioned, and the committee senses it is not being sold to, the room usually becomes more honest. That honesty is often where the real decision begins.
Consultant suitability, when that becomes the right next step
Consultants can be valuable. The trap is calling them before the institution knows what it is truly seeking.
If a consultant process becomes appropriate, the work can extend into a brief phase of consultant suitability: clarifying the mandate, criteria, decision process, and governance guardrails so the search is not a beauty parade disguised as prudence.