Run the firm
45 primitives in this stage — 40 skills · 5 agents. Concept-stage catalogue, kept vendor-agnostic.
Search out passive candidates across networks →
“The best candidates I've hired weren't looking. This one runs the search I'd never have time to run myself.”
Run the overdue-payment chase sequence →
“Chasing money is repetitive and time-stamped. I'd rather it happened without me until it's actually stuck.”
Watch tax and filing deadlines →
“A missed filing deadline is always avoidable. I want to be reminded with enough runway, not the day before.”
Run the periodic strategy-review cycle →
“The strategic review that keeps getting deprioritised doesn't happen. A scheduled cycle makes it structural, not aspirational.”
Statutory deadline watcher and chaser →
“The obligation calendar only works if someone is actually watching it. A scheduled agent means the watch happens whether or not I remember.”
Draft the role brief and ideal-candidate profile →
“Every bad hire I've made started with a vague brief. This forces me to say exactly what 'good' looks like before I talk to anyone.”
Screen an inbound application against the profile →
“My funnel is big enough that I miss strong unconventional candidates when I'm tired. This catches them and disposes of the obvious misses cleanly.”
Design the interview and work-sample for the role →
“When every interviewer is scoring something different I get noise. This gives everyone a consistent frame so calibration is actually possible.”
Synthesise interviewer scorecards into a hire decision →
“We used to average gut feel and call it calibration. This makes the disagreements visible so the actual conversation is about evidence.”
Frame and draft the offer and negotiation stance →
“I've lost candidates to clumsy offer conversations. This lets me walk in knowing exactly what I can move and how I'm going to frame it.”
Build the first-90-days plan for the new producer →
“A vague welcome wastes the first month. I want the new hire to know exactly what success looks like on day 1.”
Synthesise evidence into a performance review →
“Reviews based on who I spoke to last week are unfair to people who do quiet excellent work. This forces the evidence out before the conversation.”
Shape development goals and the growth path →
“Assessment without a forward plan just demoralises people. This is the bit that makes the review actually useful.”
Frame the promotion or role-change case →
“Promotion decisions that rely on who advocated loudest erode trust across the whole team. This makes the standard and the evidence visible.”
Identify the firm's collective capability gaps →
“We keep sending the same people to every hard problem because no one else can do it. This shows me where that bottleneck actually lives.”
Design a training session, workshop, or mentorship pairing →
“Training that isn't designed around a real gap just consumes a Friday. This starts with the gap and works backward.”
Draft invoice from SOW and logged work →
“Invoice errors erode trust with good clients fast. I want the draft to be right before it ever reaches my desk.”
Explain actuals-vs-budget variance and recommend action →
“A number without an explanation is just noise. I want to know whether this gap is a timing issue or something I need to act on now.”
Categorise and code transactions to the chart of accounts →
“The ambiguous transactions are the ones that come back and bite me at year-end. Having someone work through them properly during the month is worth it.”
Prepare the accountant brief and tax-filing pack →
“My accountant charges by the hour for questions I should have answered before I sent the pack. This gets the pack right first time.”
Set the annual budget and revenue targets →
“A target without a budget is just aspiration. This forces the conversation about what we're actually aiming for and what we're committing to spend.”
Assess engagement commercial health and flag change orders →
“Not every drift is a change-order — sometimes it's just poor sequencing. This tells me which ones I actually need to raise with the client.”
Extract method skeleton from engagement narratives →
“We keep reinventing the same approach on every engagement because it lives in one person's head. This is how you start getting it out.”
Pressure-test the method's decision rules →
“A method that only works when you wrote it isn't transferable. This is the test that finds out if someone else could follow the rules.”
Draft a reusable template from a method →
“A method without an artefact is a theory. The template is what actually compresses time on the next engagement.”
Write the structured case record →
“The best learning from an engagement evaporates inside two weeks if it isn't written down. This is the habit that builds the firm's institutional memory.”
Design the R&D session agenda and prompts →
“Undirected partner sessions produce heat, not light. A designed agenda is the difference between exploration and drift.”
Synthesise session findings into a written output →
“The insight was in the room — this is how you stop it dying there.”
Author the method induction and guidance notes →
“I'm the bottleneck every time someone new needs to learn how we do this. This breaks that dependency.”
Critique a producer's method application →
“Competence only comes from doing it and hearing what you got wrong. This makes the feedback specific enough to actually correct the behaviour.”
Draft the one-page positioning statement →
“Every time I can't quickly explain what we do for whom, I lose the room. This forces the clarity I keep deferring.”
Pressure-test the proposed focus →
“I've committed to a focus that sounded tight and turned out to be either too small to sustain us or too vague to close on. This pressure-test comes first now.”
Classify an inbound opportunity against the focus →
“The opportunities that don't fit our focus are the ones that quietly eat the year. This keeps each intake decision anchored to the strategy.”
Design the service-line structure →
“When every engagement is custom nothing compounds — no templates, no learning, no leverage. Service-line structure is what makes scale possible.”
Set day rates and fixed-fee benchmarks →
“I've left money on the table by pricing from cost rather than from value. This forces me to reason from all three sides before I set the number.”
Model headcount and growth scenarios →
“Growth decisions feel large and permanent. Seeing the three or four coherent paths written out makes the choice tractable.”
Assess whether current strategy is working →
“Strategy drift is usually invisible until something goes wrong. This surface the signal before it becomes a problem.”
Evaluate candidate tools against the firm's needs and pick one →
“Every tool evaluation I've rushed has cost me six months and a migration. Doing the reasoning properly upfront is almost always worth it.”
Draft the toolstack usage and onboarding runbook →
“Every time a new person joins and the tool is configured slightly differently, I lose trust in the data. A runbook locks down the conventions.”
Derive the statutory filing and obligation calendar →
“Statutory obligations don't come with reminders. Building the calendar once means I stop finding out about deadlines from the penalty notice.”
Review a shareholder or partnership agreement change →
“I've signed amendments without noticing how they interacted with existing clauses. Having someone read for conflicts before sign-off is the discipline I needed.”
Assess insurance coverage adequacy against the firm's risk profile →
“My insurance was sized for the firm I was two years ago. This is the check that catches that before a claim reveals it.”
Draft an NDA, confidentiality, or IP-assignment clause →
“Using a generic NDA when onboarding a contractor with access to core methodology isn't adequate protection. This forces the specifics before I share anything.”
Map the regulatory obligations that apply to the firm →
“I didn't know GDPR applied to my firm until a prospective client's procurement team told me. Now the mapping happens before the gap does.”
Run a compliance self-assessment against an obligation →
“Compliance gaps only feel manageable once I can see exactly which requirements I'm meeting and which I'm not. This produces that list.”