The Question Every Founder Eventually Asks

It arrives in almost every scaling company's life: should we form an advisory board? The follow-up question, asked more quietly, is whether advisory boards actually do anything. Asad Shamim is well placed to answer both. As Chairman of the Advisory Board at OM International, Senior Advisor to HRH Sheikh Ahmad Bin Faisal Al Qassimi of the UAE, and a founder who built Furniture in Fashion into one of the UK's largest online furniture retailers, he has sat on every side of the advisory relationship: giving counsel, receiving it, and structuring the bodies through which it flows.

His honest answer: advisory boards add enormous value or almost none, and the difference is determined almost entirely by design.

What Advisory Boards Are Actually For

The first design question is purpose. An advisory board is not a junior board of directors; it carries no fiduciary duty and no formal authority, and pretending otherwise confuses everyone. Its genuine functions are narrower and more powerful: pattern recognition from people who have seen the company's challenges before; access to networks, customers, capital, regulators, talent, that the leadership team cannot reach alone; candid challenge to management thinking, delivered without the political weight of a governing board; and credibility signalling to counterparties who read the advisor roster as a proxy for the company's seriousness. When Shamim evaluates whether an advisory board is working, he asks a blunt question: can the CEO name three decisions in the past year that changed because of it? If not, the board is ornamental.

Where Advisory Boards Go Wrong

The failure modes are consistent across markets. Trophy-hunting: recruiting famous names for the website rather than relevant operators for the problems at hand. Vagueness: convening quarterly conversations with no agenda tied to live decisions. Overcrowding: a dozen advisors ensures that none feels responsible. Neglect: treating advisors as a resource to be tapped in crises rather than a relationship to be maintained. And perhaps most common, asymmetry of candour: management presents polished updates instead of real dilemmas, and advisors respond with polite generalities. An advisory board fed press releases will produce press-release advice.

There is also a subtler failure worth naming: the board that was once excellent but has quietly expired. Companies change faster than rosters. The advisor who was indispensable during a domestic growth phase may have little to offer once the strategic question becomes Gulf expansion or institutional capital. Leaders often avoid these conversations out of loyalty, and the board slides from asset to ritual without anyone deciding it should.

The Design Principles That Work

From his chairmanship at OM International and his engagements across the UK, UAE, and Pakistan, Shamim distils a handful of working principles. Keep it small, a handful of advisors chosen against the company's actual three-year challenges, not its aspirations. Define the ask, each advisor should know the specific domain where their counsel is expected: market entry, regulation, capital, sector expertise. Bring real problems, the agenda should be built around decisions the leadership genuinely has not made yet. Close the loop, advisors who learn what happened after their input stay engaged; those who advise into a void drift away. And refresh honestly, advisory needs change as companies grow, and a graceful rotation policy prevents boards from calcifying. These are the same disciplines that underpin the strategic advisory services Shamim provides to businesses and government-linked organisations.

The Cross-Border Multiplier

Shamim adds a dimension that reflects his own career: advisory boards deliver disproportionate value in cross-border contexts. A company entering the Gulf from Britain, or Pakistan from the Gulf, faces gaps that no amount of desk research closes, unwritten norms, institutional relationships, the credibility that comes only from association with trusted local figures. A well-chosen advisor in these settings functions as a bridge, compressing years of relationship-building into months. Much of Shamim's own advisory work, chronicled in the news section of his site, operates in exactly this bridging role along the UK-UAE-Pakistan corridor.

So: Do They Add Value?

The verdict, then, is conditional but clear. An advisory board assembled for appearances will deliver appearances. An advisory board designed around real problems, staffed with relevant experience, engaged with candour, and maintained with respect will repeatedly change outcomes, opening doors, preventing avoidable mistakes, and sharpening decisions at the moments that matter most. The instrument works; what varies is the seriousness of the hand that wields it.

For leaders considering whether their organisation needs an advisory board, or whether the one they have is earning its place, the starting point is honest diagnosis, and sometimes an outside perspective helps. Asad Shamim's office welcomes such conversations through the contact page.