Before their position becomes your terms.

Private strategy for senior leaders in regulated financial services - for the restructure, the review, the new mandate, or the new CEO about to re-decide your role.

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30 minutes. Off the record. If it is not a fit, I will say so.

§ 01 - The record

The meeting is not where it gets decided.

By the time the review, the restructure conversation, or the offer arrives, the company's position has formed.

  • ¶ aWhat they think the seat is worth.
  • ¶ bWhat counts.
  • ¶ cWhat you can be asked to carry.
  • ¶ dWhat they do not need to pay for.

That position is not stated anywhere. It surfaces in the meeting - and if it goes unchallenged, it becomes the terms. The pay. The title. The scope. The authority. The exit. If it is challenged the wrong way, the terms stay - and the conflict starts.

I work with senior leaders in the window before that happens, while their position can still be thoughtfully challenged with your evidence.

Laurie Banfi
Laurie Banfi Founder - Co. Defined
§ 02 - The docket

The moments this is built for.

  1. A restructure that will re-decide your role in rooms you are not in.

  2. A review where the company's position becomes the only record - and every pay, promotion, and scope conversation after it starts from whatever gets written.

  3. A new role or mandate that is bigger than the terms being offered for it.

  4. A new CEO or board arriving with someone else's assumptions where your record should be.

  5. A seat that has grown - projects, remit, regulation - while the terms stayed where you signed them.

  6. An exit where the terms will be calculated from the version of the role on record, not the one you actually carried.

I used to walk into those conversations braced. Now I walk in calm. Everything I need is decided before I sit down - and that has not left me.

Manager - Private wealth
§ 03 - The engagement

One engagement - The Position Brief.

10 days.
3 calls.
2 documents.
Private.
Document I Co. Defined

The Position Brief

the case for your seat

  • What is being re-decided, by whom, and what is currently on record.
  • What the seat now actually requires - its real scope, load, and obligations.
  • The evidence of what you uniquely bring to it: outcomes created, risk carried, judgment applied, complexity absorbed.
  • What is at stake if the company's position stands - pay, authority, equity, exit value, what you keep absorbing unpaid.
  • The line between ordinary contribution, expanded scope, and the value the company now builds from how you work.
  • The conditions the seat requires to be delivered properly - and the position you can stand from: what to accept, what to refuse, what to ask for.
Document II Co. Defined

The Conversation Pack

how the case holds in the room

  • The conversation itself: opening, sequence, the ask, the red lines.
  • The likely pushback - the minimizing, the deferral, the "that's already part of the job" - and the response to each.
  • The decision filters that produce the language in your own register - without sounding like you are pleading, boasting, or becoming the problem.
  • And what you walk in already knowing: what you are prepared to accept, and what you are not.
The method, in one line

Nothing here is benchmarked against peers. Peer comparison invites debate. The case is built outward from the seat itself - what it now requires, and the evidence of what you uniquely bring to it. Evidence is harder to dismiss.

How the ten days run
  1. Day 0
    Fit confirmed, intake begins.
  2. Day 3
    One extraction call, 90 minutes.
  3. Day 7
    The draft brief, with one calibration pass.
  4. Day 9
    The prep session, before your conversation.
  5. Day 10
    Final delivery. And within 30 days of your conversation, a debrief.
§ 04 - The position

What you walk in with.

§ 05 - The fit

Who this is for

Senior leaders in regulated financial services - managers, chiefs and heads of function, directors, executive committee members, general counsel, board seats. In funds, asset management, private wealth, banking, and fiduciary businesses.

With a real moment coming: a conversation or decision that will re-set pay, scope, authority, terms, or exit value.

And who it is not for

This is not coaching.

This is not coaching, visibility advice, or a CV rewrite. It is private strategic decision preparation for a professional moment where walking in under-described is expensive.

If there is no live decision, no meaningful stakes, or what is wanted is a guaranteed outcome - this is not the right work, and I will say so on the call.

§ 06 - The fee

The question is not the fee.

The question is what the conversation is worth if it is decided from the company's current version of the role.

If the decision in front of you does not carry many multiples of that - in pay, terms, authority, or exit value - this is not the right work. That is exactly what the private call establishes, in both directions.

“Nothing about the conversations I'm having now feels like conflict. I know the decisions I need to make, I know what I am prepared to accept - and I know it before they do. That gives me a peace I didn't think was achievable.”

Head of Function - Asset management
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Laurie Banfi
Laurie Banfi - Founder, Co. Defined
§ 07 - Who I am

I came to this work from oncology.

As a radiation therapist, I learned that what someone brings and what gets recorded about them are two different things - and that the gap has consequences. We were taught to close it.

I also learned to hold the hardest conversations there are - the ones where someone has to look directly at what is true, decide, and keep moving - because the stakes did not allow for less.

When I moved into corporate, I found the same gap in senior rooms, handled with none of that discipline: leaders who know exactly what they carry but have never had to put it down as evidence, because they were too busy carrying it.

I am not in your market. I am not in your network. And I spent years in a profession where confidentiality was clinical, not contractual.

It is why people talk to me.

After the conversation

In their words.

It changed the conversation. The review stopped being about whether I was asking for too much, and became about what the seat actually requires. Every conversation after it has started from there.

Executive Director - Private wealth

I would not have had the confidence to have the conversation the way I did without this. I got the outcome I actually wanted - not the one I was about to settle for. And I do not settle anymore.

Director - Financial services

Ten years of my work, laid out as evidence. I had never seen my role written down accurately before - and I read it differently now. So do they.

C-suite executive - Financial services
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§ 08 - Sealed

Everything you share stays between us.

  • Your material lives in a private folder, is used only to build your brief, is processed under commercial confidentiality terms, never trains any AI model, and is deleted on request after the engagement.
  • Anonymized patterns are only ever discussed with your explicit agreement.

In a market this connected, that is not a policy. It is the product.

CO. DEFINED · PRIVATE BY DESIGN ·  CO. DEFINED
§ 09 - The window

When this is most useful.

After the decision is made, this becomes recovery work. Before it, it is leverage.

§ 10 - Begin

If a moment like this is coming.

The private call is 30 minutes and off the record.

Before it, you complete a short assessment of the seat - so the call is about your situation, not a pitch.

If the stakes are not real, I will say so. If they are, you will leave the call knowing exactly what the work will build, and you decide from there.

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