Why BE Turned Down More Clients in 2025 Than in the Past Decade
The legendary “sword in the stone” can be likened to an organization’s vision – a source of power and direction that only the leader can pull free and wield effectively. Too often, that sword stays stuck, and the kingdom (company) descends into chaos.
Early in early days of my company, we eagerly accepted every client that came our way. But in 2025, I found myself saying “no” more often than ever before. Why would a consultant turn down business? The hard truth is that many organizations approached me without a clear vision – no true north to guide their strategy. Without a vision, a CEO or leader cannot fully articulate what success looks like, and that means any resulting consulting engagement is built on sand.
As I often explain to CEOs: “I can’t help you if you don’t have a vision for your company and you should be careful of anyone who claims they can…”
So why doesn’t BE just take the money and run? Outside of integrity, we found out time after time, no matter many hours we put in, no matter how many approaches and frameworks, and no matter how many knowledgeable people in my network we threw at the problem, it didn’t work. BE focuses on more doing than talking because 90% of our business comes from referrals. We could no longer afford to take on mission impossible hopped up on unbridled optimism. There was empirical data and directly stated we were spending twice the effort and 3x the time to provide a bad experience that didn’t lead to referrals and may have been quietly costing us business. In addition, we discovered the process of “pushing through” was the leading cause of burnout and churn within the organization!
Trusted members of their network vouched for us, but they couldn’t see the value or understand why we kept going back to the basics. I had to explain to the team why we kept trying to doing out of scope work we couldn’t charge for. We all felt under appreciated for our efforts while our clients felt things were moving fast enough. Finally, we reached a breaking point…
The Missing Vision: An Obstacle to Success
It turns out Jim Collins and Simon Sinek have been right all along – vision isn’t just corporate fluff; it’s the bedrock of organizational success. Collins emphasizes the importance of setting a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and a vivid long-term vision that galvanizes teams. Sinek famously urges leaders to “Start with Why,” underscoring that people are inspired by a clear purpose and direction.
In many failing projects, the root cause is unclear strategic vision from leadership. In fact, leadership expert, John Kotter, found that executives under-communicate their vision by a factor of 10. This means that by the time you’re tired of repeating it, your key stakeholders are only just beginning to absorb it. Without a well-defined and well-communicated vision, even the most talented consultants struggle to hit a moving, invisible target.
Moving Goalposts and Constant Course-Correction
One major symptom of the “vision vacuum” is moving goalposts. When a CEO hasn’t clarified the end goal, objectives and expectations become fluid. The target keeps shifting, and a “win” is never clearly within sight. I’ve seen engagements where in month one the priority was X, but by month three it’s Y or Z, because leadership was essentially figuring out their vision on the fly. The consultant ends up chasing a nebulous outcome that keeps changing.
This constant course-correction not only erodes the consultant’s ability to deliver results, it also delays delivery timelines. Projects drag on because the team must pause and wait for the CEO to “go back to the drawing board” – perhaps to research the market or draft foundational documents from scratch that should have existed from day one. As a result, consultants spend half their time waiting on decisions or re-scoping the work, instead of executing. It’s scope creep born from indecision.
The signs are always there. The consultant goes through the services, they communicate the expected outcomes. And seemingly out left field, CEOs and senior leadership are experiencing PTSD before they sign the dotted line. Tell tale comments are dropped like: “The last consultant was a waste of time,” “The last X position was incompetent,” “They didn’t fit, they didn’t get things done, they didn’t do the work how I wanted.” Leaders know they need help, they see the value, but someone broke their heart and ran off with their money…
From the CEO’s perspective, it feels like the consultant isn’t hitting targets; from the consultant’s perspective, those targets were never firmly set. I’m not saying I have never dropped the ball, but when it’s from a lack of direction, it’s a frustrating loop for both sides. Clear, fixed goals at the outset are the only way to break that cycle. As a Gartner study noted, a significant number of project failures aren’t due to incompetent execution but to “poor leadership decisions, such as unclear strategic vision” at the top. In other words, if you don’t pin down what you’re aiming for, no outside expert can consistently deliver the goods.
Stuck in the Weeds: Teams Focused Only on the Short Term
Another consequence of lacking a unifying vision is that everyone defaults to short-term thinking. I often meet CEOs who lament that they “can’t delegate” effectively – every task still falls back to them. When we dig deeper, the reason becomes clear: without a long-term vision or clear direction, their team has no context for decision-making. Employees focus on today’s to-do list and this week’s fires, because they aren’t aligned on the bigger picture. They don’t proactively drive long-term initiatives because, frankly, they’re not sure what the long-term is. All the strategy lives in the CEO’s head (if it exists at all).
I recall a conversation with a business owner (let’s call him Mike) who said, “I’ve got smart people and they care… but I’m still the one keeping all the plates spinning.” Mike had built a solid company, but he hadn’t shared a formal vision statement or clear direction with his team. He assumed they “should know where we’re going by now,” but the truth was they didn’t. They were guessing, doing their best with what they thought mattered. Because the vision lived only in his head, his team couldn’t take ownership. In the absence of a communicated vision, you can’t delegate! The “why” and “where to” must come from the top. Mike’s employees weren’t defiant or inept; they simply lacked the North Star to guide their independent action.
Company leaders are finding it difficult to do their actual jobs like developing teams, implementing new strategies, and driving business growth because they are the ones filling the gaps in between tasks. Resetting teams, setting up the next to-do list, becoming a data analyst to get details and what worked and what didn’t. For me, that equated to cancelled meetings, meetings where the CEO is half in and half responding to the next crisis, missed deadlines and half deployed strategies.
The moment he clearly defined and communicated the company’s direction (e.g. what kind of work truly excited him, which clients to start saying “no” to, the culture he wanted to build), things changed. Within weeks the team started stepping up on their own – not because he handed off a task list, but because they finally saw the same finish line and understood how their work connected to it. This is a powerful lesson for any leader: if your team seems stuck in the weeds, constantly coming back to you for guidance on every little decision, ask yourself if you’ve given them a vision to follow or if they’re “working hard in the dark.”
No Rubric, No Results: Vetting Consultants Without a Vision
Engaging a consultant without a clear vision is a bit like hiring a builder when you haven’t decided what kind of house you want. How will you choose the right person for the job? CEOs who lack a defined vision (and the related strategy and success metrics) are unprepared to properly vet consultants, advisors, or other partners. They have no solid rubric to compare a consultant’s offering or track the results because success hasn’t been concretely defined up front.
This often forces leaders to depend on the vendor’s own narrative of progress – a “just trust us” scenario that puts the fox in charge of the henhouse. If a consultant says, “We need to add more to the scope to achieve your (still vague) goal,” the CEO has little basis to challenge or affirm that. Inevitably, the engagement grows in cost and length, and the vendor keeps getting paid to boil the ocean.
To be clear, many consultants operate in good faith, but even the best-intentioned advisor can’t hit a target that keeps drifting. And a less scrupulous one might take advantage of the ambiguity by endlessly expanding the workload (and billable hours). The antidote is upfront clarity from the client side. Before you ever sign a contract, define what success will look like. As one advisory firm recommends, “clearly define project objectives and deliverables upfront, and establish concrete success metrics” to ensure you and your consultant are aligned on outcomes.
For example, are you aiming to increase customer retention by 15% in a year? Reduce operating costs by Q4? Launch a new product by a specific date? Be as specific as possible. Also outline your expectations: what deliverables you need, what timeline and budget you have, and what level of support you expect from the consultant versus your team. This kind of strong preparation not only helps you evaluate consultants’ proposals (you can directly compare how each plans to meet your clearly stated goals), it also helps you manage internal expectations. When everyone knows the desired destination and metrics, you can objectively assess if the consultant is moving you forward or not. In short, vision and defined goals become your yardstick – without it, you’re measuring performance in the dark.
Set Up to Fail: When Good Consultants Meet Unprepared Clients
This brings me to a final, critical perspective – that of the consultants themselves. I pose this question to my fellow advisors: Do you feel like some client engagements set you up for failure from day one? You’re not alone. In fact, many good, intelligent consultants are seeing their reputations suffer and their frustration rise, not because they lost their edge, but because they walked into an organization lacking the foundation for success. You can bring a proven framework or method that delivered fantastic results elsewhere, but if the client’s leadership has no vision, if goals keep changing, if the team isn’t bought in, then even the best playbook will falter. The client ends up unhappy, and the consultant is left scratching their head wondering how a “surefire” method fell flat.
Don’t get me wrong, some consultants are terrible. Some act in bad faith thinking their own hope and faith brought them you! Some don’t have the skills and figure it out until it’s too late. I can tell you a story or two where I simply didn’t measure up. I know the feeling of seeing a founder fighting for their lives, betting on you and learning the project was too big. This is not a blame the leader rant. This is the “Come to Jesus” conversation between two opposing forces on the same side…
Often, the consultant gets the blame for these disappointments – sometimes publicly, always privately. But the reality is that the failure was sown from the start. As one industry article bluntly noted, it’s not always the consultant’s fault: “sometimes, companies… unknowingly do things that result in the failure of their engagement with the consultant”consultport.com. Lack of executive support, constantly shifting directives, fear of change – all of these client-side issues can doom a project.
For example, if senior leaders drag their feet on providing information or making decisions, the consultant’s work stalls; if they hesitate to implement recommendations, results never materialize. In the end, the engagement fizzles and the company might think “that consultant failed us,” when in truth the environment set the consultant up to fail. As one consulting platform observed, too much internal resistance or hesitation to act can result in a failed engagement – and you may think the consultant failed you! This scenario is happening to even top-tier consultants, and it’s erosive to trust on both sides. Good advisors become wary of accepting new clients without certain prerequisites, and CEOs become cynical about the value of consultants – a lose-lose situation.
Having lived this pattern repeatedly, I made a strategic choice: I’d rather turn down a client than be part of another vision-less fiasco. In 2025, that meant I declined more engagements than I had in the last ten years of impactful work. It was not an easy decision – walking away from potential revenue never is – but I’m convinced it was the right one.
A New Standard for Engagement
Now, before I agree to work with a company, I look for a few telltale signs of readiness: Is there a clear vision or mission that the leadership can articulate? Do they have concrete goals or at least a definition of what success looks like for the initiative at hand? Are they and their team prepared to align behind a direction? If the answer is no, my first recommendation to them isn’t a fancy consulting package – it’s to go back and do the homework of crafting their vision and strategy. In some cases, I’ll offer a short preliminary engagement specifically to help them find that clarity – essentially, helping them pull the sword out of the stone – before any larger project. If they aren’t willing to do that, I respectfully decline to proceed.
For CEOs, this might be a wake-up call. Bringing in outside help will not magically or manually fix the problem. As a leader, defining and championing the vision is your job – you can’t fully delegate that to a consultant. Consultants can facilitate, refine, and operationalize your vision, but they can’t substitute for its absence. Think of it this way: consultants are like expert navigators – they can chart the course, optimize the route, and guide the ship. But you must decide the destination. If you haven’t decided where your “ship” is headed, any navigator will disappoint you. Too many businesses are meandering down any road, and no consultant can deliver “victory” when victory was never defined at the outset.
As the old proverb (often attributed to Lewis Carroll) goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
On the flip side, for my colleagues in the consulting and advisory world, it’s important we acknowledge this dynamic. It may be time to be more discerning about the clients we take on – to ensure the basic building blocks (like vision and executive alignment) are in place or to have a frank discussion with the client about establishing them. Otherwise, we risk burning out, ruining our own reputations, and failing to deliver impact despite our best efforts. It’s not arrogant to insist on these fundamentals; it’s responsible. Our most “impactful work” happens when we’re empowered to aim at a clear target and work with a client team that’s truly prepared to change.
In closing, turning down clients in 2025 was a bold move for me, but it was driven by an unwavering commitment to results. Companies are failing to get results even when they bring in help, and the missing ingredient is often visionand strategic clarity. By highlighting this issue, I hope more leaders will take a hard look in the mirror before they call in outside experts. If even a few CEOs pause and say, “Let’s get our vision straight first,” and even a few consultants say, “I’ll help you with that foundation before we dive into execution,” then we’ll see far more engagements succeed for everyone involved.
Ultimately, a consultant’s value is unlocked only in partnership with a client’s clear vision. When both sides do their part, it’s a recipe for the kind of success that makes everyone look good – the CEO, the consultant, and the entire team. And that’s exactly the outcome we all want to see.
I invite both CEOs and consultants to share their experiences and perspectives on this topic. Have you encountered the “vision gap” in your projects? How did you address it? Let’s discuss in the comments.
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