Choosing a governance and strategy execution adviser in Dubai

Updated 17 October 2026

A board approves a strategy. Six months later, the reports describe plenty of activity, but the expected savings remain difficult to find. Elsewhere, a family group is preparing for an outside shareholder and discovers that nobody has the same understanding of who can approve a major investment.

These situations call for different expertise. Before choosing an adviser, leadership needs to be precise about the question it wants answered. A broad brief to “improve governance” leaves too much room for an impressive presentation and too little agreement on what should change.

Start with the decision that is stuck

Choose a recent example. Perhaps a subsidiary purchase passed through several committees without a decision. Perhaps a transformation has missed a milestone because two executives disagree about priorities. Ask what prevented a resolution and which consequences now matter.

This gives the assignment a useful starting point. It also helps distinguish a problem with approval rules from one caused by missing information, insufficient capacity or an unresolved disagreement between owners. Those problems do not all need another policy.

The adviser should explain what they will examine, who they need to speak to and what leadership will be able to decide afterwards. If that explanation remains vague, the scope needs more work.

Know who will do the work

A network of experts can bring valuable depth to an assignment. The client should know which specialists are involved, what they contribute and who remains accountable for the overall work.

Ask who will lead the engagement day to day. Establish how specialist input will be reviewed and how disagreements will be resolved. Where legal, tax, technical or other specialist advice is required, agree those responsibilities explicitly. A single contact is useful only if the expertise behind that contact fits the assignment.

Independence also deserves a practical discussion. An adviser recommending software, a provider or a transaction structure should explain any commercial relationship that could influence the recommendation.

Agree what will be usable afterwards

For governance work, the result might be approval rules tested against actual decisions, clearer committee responsibilities and revised board papers. For a stalled programme, it might be a revised investment case, decisions on what to stop and a delivery plan that reflects available resources.

Investor readiness requires its own scope. Leadership may need a clearer ownership structure, consistent financial assumptions and a record of missing due diligence documents. Agree which work belongs to management and which requires specialist advisers.

For each output, identify its user and the first occasion on which they will use it. A decision framework that cannot help with next month's investment proposal is unlikely to become more useful sitting in a shared folder.

Make the handover part of the assignment

Before work starts, agree how the organisation will maintain the result. Who updates the approval rules? Who checks benefits after the programme team leaves? What training will the people taking over need?

Nasaq Partners works with boards and executive teams on governance, strategy execution, technology oversight and capital readiness, drawing on a network of experts where the assignment requires it. The scope should always make the people, responsibilities and expected outputs clear.

When comparing advisers, ask each to explain how they would approach the same unresolved decision. Their questions will tell you a great deal about the work you can expect.