Three Advisors, Three Answers
Three advisors were asked how much cost had to come out to turn around an airline. They gave three answers, two pointing in opposite directions.
Three advisory teams read the same airline's filings and came back with three answers, the highest more than double the lowest. None of them miscalculated. The divergence lived one level below the math, in the basis, and nobody in the room had written theirs down.
The room was full of people who knew what they were doing. Three advisory teams, each with restructuring credentials longer than the runway we were trying to save. One airline, one set of filings, one deceptively simple question: how much cost has to come out before this business can stand on its own?
Three answers came back. Not three estimates clustered around a number - three answers, with the highest more than double the lowest, and two of them disagreeing on the direction of the fix. One team wanted to cut into the network. Another insisted the network was the only thing keeping the airline solvent. Both had spreadsheets. Both were, internally, correct.
Why did three advisors give three different answers?
It would be comforting to blame a formula error. There wasn't one. Each team had built its model carefully, checked it, and could trace every figure back to a line in the accounts. The divergence didn't live in the math. It lived one level below it - in the basis: which leases were treated as debt, where maintenance reserves landed, how fuel hedges were classified, whether ancillary revenue sat above or below the line everyone was staring at.
None of those choices is wrong on its own. Each is a defensible reading of the same disclosure. But stack a dozen of them and you no longer have one airline described three ways - you have three different airlines, each demanding a different rescue.
”The numbers didn't disagree. The bases did - and nobody in the room had written theirs down.
Why the C-suite couldn't choose
Put yourself in the chief executive's chair. Three credible firms, three reconciled models, three confident recommendations. There is no neutral way to adjudicate between them, because the disagreement isn't on the surface where it can be argued - it's buried in assumptions that were never made explicit. So the decision defaults to whoever presents best, or whoever the board trusts most. That is not analysis. That is theatre with footnotes.
This is the pattern we kept seeing, across restructurings and routine comparisons alike. The failure is almost never computational. It is that everyone normalizes the statements privately, in their own head or their own model, and then argues about conclusions as if the inputs were shared. They weren't.
How can advisors' numbers be made to agree?
The fix is unglamorous: agree the basis first, in the open, before anyone computes anything. Standardize every statement onto one consistent set of definitions, make every mapping visible, and let every figure trace back to the filing it came from. Do that and the three answers collapse into one - not because the analysts suddenly agree, but because they're finally answering the same question.
That airline eventually got its number. It took three weeks of reconciling bases that should have been settled in an afternoon. PitchFit exists so the next team doesn't lose those three weeks - so the C-suite never again has to choose which version of the numbers to believe.
Frequently asked questions
What question were the advisors asked?
How much cost had to come out of the airline before the business could stand on its own. One airline, one set of filings, three advisory teams.
How far apart were the answers?
The highest was more than double the lowest, and two of them disagreed on the direction of the fix: one team wanted to cut into the network, another insisted the network was the only thing keeping the airline solvent.
Was there a calculation error?
No. Each team built its model carefully and could trace every figure back to a line in the accounts. The divergence lived one level below the math, in the basis.
Which choices made the numbers differ?
Which leases were treated as debt, where maintenance reserves landed, how fuel hedges were classified, and whether ancillary revenue sat above or below the line.
Is this only a restructuring problem?
No. The same pattern shows up across restructurings and routine comparisons alike: statements normalized privately, then conclusions argued as if the inputs were shared.
Advised on major restructuring and transformation programs at Oliver Wyman before building PitchFit to end the "three answers" problem for good.
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