How it starts
Every engagement starts the same way: with listening, and with a fixed-fee, read-only audit that ships as a finished piece of work.
Fixed fee. Read-only. One to two weeks. A written findings report and a standing dashboard — both yours to keep, whatever happens next.
The fix, scoped from what the audit found — not from a guess. Fixed price when the scope is clear enough to price.
Install the working practice in your environment: review gates, templates, ways of working, and learning loops — adapted to your business.
A standing advisory relationship. Second opinion on call. Escalate when something needs refining, and pressure-test decisions before they're locked.
I don't start by changing anything. I start by listening and measuring. The audit ships as a finished piece of work that you can keep. You decide whether to continue with me.
Start with an effective leading question
I carried this practice with me from Thoughtworks because it gets further in 10 minutes than a discovery deck gets in a week:
“Thinking of this aspect of your business on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the absolute best, where would you put it? Now talk to me about the gap between that number and 10.”
Then I go after the most obvious pain point — not the most architecturally elegant one. The elegant problem can wait. The obvious one is the one that produces felt relief, and relief is what buys the trust to do the rest.
Thirty minutes. No deck. We work out whether an audit is the right first step — and if it isn't, I'll say so.
A 30-minute call. No deck. We work out whether an audit is the right first step, and if it isn't I'll say so.