§ 01 · The written record

Why it is not enough on its own

Your written process is what the business believes it does.

Your systems, your procedures and your spreadsheets hold a record of the business. It is a real record and it is worth having. It is also incomplete in one specific way: it holds the decisions somebody wrote down.

Most of the judgement that decides your work was never written down. It happens on the phone, in the corridor, in the client meeting, in the head of the person who has done the job for eleven years, in the personal list they keep because the system does not hold it. None of that is in the record.

Scope an agent against the record and you have built against a description of the business rather than the business. It will pass the demo, because a demo runs on the tidy version. It will fail on Wednesday, because Wednesday does not.

Where the record stops

Half oneWhat is written down

Systems and the data in them

Spreadsheets and shared folders

The documented process

Anything somebody decided to record

A real record, and worth having

Half twoWhere the work actually happens

On the phone

In the corridor

In the client meeting

In the head of the person who has done it for eleven years

On the personal list the system does not hold

Nothing recorded, and usually the longer half

Scope against this half and you get a demo that works

Scope against both and you get a Wednesday that works

Everyone else builds against the left column, because it is the half you can read. The right column is where the judgement lives.

§ 02 · The four steps

In order, and nothing built until the third one has spoken

Find out first. Build last.

01 · ONE DAY, ON SITE

Preliminary audit.

I write down the canonical record: what is documented, and where it lives. Then I write down the other half, the map of every channel where the work happens and nothing is recorded. Both halves are stated plainly, and the second is usually the longer one. You get both documents on the day.

02 · TWO TO FOUR WEEKS

Passive observation.

Those channels get captured while the work carries on as normal. You buy the capture, you own the recording and you run it. I specify what needs capturing. You decide how far you are willing to go, and you decide it knowing what it costs, because I price it at the end of step one.

The real procedure, and the AI strategy.

A written procedure built from what happened, not from what the manual says happens. For most firms it is the first accurate description of their own operation they have ever held. Next to it, in the same document, where AI earns its place and where it does not.

04 · ONLY NOW

Implementation.

Either an operating system like Maxy that runs the repeatable work, or specific Claude training for the people whose judgement runs it. Step three decides which, and step three is allowed to decide neither.

Three steps of finding out, then one of building

01 · One day

Preliminary audit

The canonical record, and the map of every channel where nothing is recorded. Both in writing, on the day.

02 · Two to four weeks

Passive observation

Those channels captured while the work carries on. You buy it, you own it, you run it.

The real procedure, and the AI strategy

What the business actually does, written down. Then where AI earns its place, and where it does not.

What step three decides. Whether the work that is slowing you down is work a system should run, or work a person should be better at. That single question sends you through one of three doors, and one of them is the door marked nothing.

Outcome A

An operating system, like Maxy

The work is repeatable, it crosses several systems, and it can be handed over with a person signing off the parts that matter.

What gets builtAgents that run the work, with an owner, an off switch and a record of every step.

Outcome B

Specific Claude training

Your judgement runs the work the whole way through. What is slow is how the job gets done, not what the job is.

What gets builtThe parts of your own week, rebuilt on Claude with you, on your live systems.

Outcome C

Little or none of it needs AI

The fix is the procedure itself: a handoff in the wrong order, a form filled twice, a decision nobody owns. This happens, and I say so.

What gets builtNothing. Step three was the delivery, and you keep it.

Step 04 · Implementation · reached only through door A or door B

Three of the four steps are finding out. The fourth is set apart because it is the only one that builds anything, and because it is the one you can be told you do not need.

Step 01 is not the free self-assessment. That is twenty questions you answer about yourself, scored on screen, costing nothing. The preliminary audit is a day of me on site, writing down what is true, and it is chargeable work that stands on its own. You do not wait a month for something to hold. The two documents from step 01 are yours at the end of that day, and most firms have never had either. Stop there and you still keep them.

§ 03 · What it is for

The part that matters most, and it is not the software

The parts of your job that do not need you stop needing you.

You did not take this job to key the same details into a second system, chase an email, or write the covering note you have written four hundred times. Somebody has to do those things and at the moment it is you, and they take the hours you would rather spend on the work you are actually good at.

That is what comes back. The machine takes the parts that do not need a person, and you get the time back for the parts that do: the call where you read the room, the judgement nobody can write down, the client who needs you rather than a process. More of the job you took, less of the job that came with it.

This is also why the method works at all. A capture that people believe is a redundancy exercise produces a false picture of the work, because everyone behaves differently while it runs. So the honesty here is not a courtesy. It is the condition on which the whole thing gives you a true answer.

Nobody is being replaced. Where an owner sees this from is the next paragraph, and it is a growth question rather than a headcount one. What it never is, in any engagement I run, is a way to end up with fewer people.

If you own the business

The next increase in work does not have to come with an increase in payroll. You grow without adding staff, because the capacity is already in the building and it is currently being spent on work that does not need a person.

If the work is yours

You get your week back. The parts of your job that do not need you stop needing you, and the time goes to the work only you can do. That is the outcome this is designed around, and the one I would rather be judged on.

§ 04 · Two conditions

Not negotiable, in either direction

Said out loud on day one, and you can decline any channel.

It is said out loud on day one. Your staff are told, in your words, before anything is captured: the work is being watched, not the workers. I will not run this quietly and I will not run it on people who have not been told.

You can decline any channel. If you do not want a channel captured, it does not get captured. That channel then stays undocumented, and the procedure you end up with has a known gap in it. That is your call to make, and you make it knowing the consequence in advance rather than finding it later.

§ 05 · Where this sits

Against the four stages of an engagement

It does not replace the engagement. It is what discovery and analysis now consist of.

Discovery produces the statement of the canonical record and the channel map. Observation and the real procedure sit between discovery and analysis, and analysis then takes the real procedure apart rather than the written one. Re-engineering and handover are unchanged.

How an engagement runs, stage by stage →

§ 06 · Who holds the picture

And who holds it after I leave

You will not need me to see yourself.

A company cannot see itself clearly from the inside. That is true, and it is the reason this step exists. The usual conclusion drawn from it is that you therefore need somebody outside watching you permanently.

I draw the opposite conclusion. You buy the capture, you own the recording, and you keep the procedure it produces. When I leave you are holding a true picture of your own business, in your own hands, that you can run again the next time something changes. If you want me back you can have me back.

You keepThe channel map: every place the work happens, recorded or not.

You keepThe recording, on tooling you bought and you run.

You keepThe real procedure, and the strategy that says where AI earns its place.

Start with a discovery session, or answer twenty questions on the free self-assessment first. Either way you leave with something written down.