
Engagements
Six rungs, and the honest status of each.
Each rung states what it covers and what it does not. Scope and fee are set in a written proposal after the diagnosis — there is no mystery about what you would be buying, and no number invented to fill a table.
How the rungs relate
-
Signal
The entry point
A diagnosis that produces a scored baseline. Everything after it is designed against evidence rather than an assumption, which is why nothing starts before it.
-
Foundry
The reformation
The rebuild the baseline argues for: positioning, offer architecture, sales process and buyer journey.
-
Watch
Keeps it running
Implementation support after the rebuild, for as long as the system is still settling.
Not a next step — a different door
These three do not sit above Watch. They open on a relationship that already exists, and the diagnosis is not the way in.
The ladder
Rung names are provisional while a naming session is outstanding. The functions are not.
How the fee is set
- Diagnosis first
- SignalSo the proposal is written against a measured baseline rather than a conversation.
- Then a written proposal
- Scope, fee, limits, exitAll four in writing, before you commit, not after.
- No published price
- Deliberate, for nowThe firm has not reconciled a price list it is willing to stand behind, so it does not publish one. Stating a number we would renegotiate is worse than stating none.
What this rests on
- Sold separately, bought togetherStrategy without execution decays into a document. Execution without a strategic reason gets switched out.
- What a proposal has to state before it is signedScope, fee, limitations and the exit. The last two are the ones usually missing.
- The exit is written before you commitThe time to agree how an engagement ends is while both parties still want it to work.
- The engagements we declineSometimes the reply is that we are not the right firm, and that is a real reply rather than a posture.
Written out in full, so you can disagree with the reasoning rather than take the claim on trust.
Start where everything else is designed from.
Signal produces the baseline. It is yours either way.
Sent straight to the two people who answer it. No autoresponder sequence, no call center.