EffectvEffectv

The diagnosis

Two weeks. One function. A decision you can act on.

Most AI programmes start with a tool and work backwards to the value. This starts with the work — read task by task — and tells you where AI belongs, what to change, and what it is worth.

Book 30 minutesSee what it produces

Your challenges

  • You have spent on AI and cannot point at what changed in the work?
  • Every proposal starts with a tool and works backwards to the value?
  • You cannot say which workflow to redesign first, or defend the order to your CFO?

What we do

Three moves, in this order, over two weeks.

01

Read the function along both cuts

  • How it is organized, and how work actually flows through it.
  • The one or two workflows you cannot afford to get wrong, named.
  • A preliminary verdict on every team in the function.
02

Score every task

  • The Stanford Human Agency Scale, against a published rubric.
  • Current state and future state, step by step.
  • Where the hours go today, and what AI can actually take.
03

Turn evidence into decisions

  • Resolved decisions in capital-allocation order, each with an owner.
  • Value per workflow as a range, with every assumption on the surface.
  • What has to be true before it can run, and what should wait.

What you are left with

Not a report to file.

A small set of resolved decisions, each with a verdict, the named bets it rests on, and the working behind every number. Underneath them sit the blueprints the decisions came from.

A decision you can defend

In capital-allocation order, with the owner named against each one, and the working behind every call.

A number your CFO can hold

A range rather than a point estimate, with upside kept out of the base case and each assumption named.

A viability verdict per team

With the task-level scan that would falsify it, produced before the verdict locks.

What the two weeks produce
01The function blueprintThe future-state operating model, and a viability verdict for every team in the function — which are durable, which are time-bound, which need redesign, and the evidence behind each call.
02One or two workflow blueprintsYour most critical workflows, step by step: where AI leads, where people decide, how the handoffs change, cycle time today against cycle time after.
03Three to five role blueprintsThe roles that run those workflows, at task grain: what AI absorbs, what it augments, and which human capabilities become more valuable as it does.
04Per-workflow value, in rangesWhat each redesign is worth and what it costs. Conservative to optimistic, every assumption named, upside we cannot defend kept out of the base case.
05The data your workflows depend on, checkedWhether each redesigned workflow can run on information you can actually produce, the gaps ranked by what they hold up, and the words the workflow runs on defined once — with the places your systems disagree about them named. How that is assessed.
06The decision readoutA leadership session working through the resolved decisions in capital-allocation order. Everyone reads the same evidence from where they sit.

What we need from you

Less than you would expect.

  • Your sponsor: a scoping conversation before we start, the readout at the end, roughly two hours in between.
  • The function head: two working sessions, at the start and the end of week one.
  • Access to the people who actually run the workflows, for the interviews in week two.
  • No data project first. Data readiness is part of the work, not a condition for starting it.

And one thing we ask of ourselves. Before it starts, we write down together what would make these two weeks worth having done. At the readout we go through it honestly against that. If it worked, we talk about what comes next. If it did not, we say so and say what would have had to be different — we would rather tell you that than sell you the next phase.

Rigor in the open

How we stop ourselves from inventing numbers.

89%

Exact agreement between independent raters across a 164-task calibration study.

100%

Agreement within one level on the same study, scored against a published rubric.

Range

Every ROI figure. No point estimates, upside kept out of the base case, each assumption on the surface.

Two

Independent evidence classes behind every consequential call. No verdict rests on a single source.

We productized an analytical tradition rather than inventing one, and the Human Agency Scale is Stanford's. What is ours is applying it at task grain across four levels of an organization, and standing behind the result. Read the scale.

And then what

The diagnosis is where you start. Staying through adoption is why it is worth starting with us.

A diagnostic vendor hands you the answer and leaves. The value in a workflow redesign is not created when the analysis is finished — it is created when the redesigned work becomes the way the organization actually operates, which is months later and several handovers away.

So the same people who read the work stay through building it, communicating it, and embedding it. That is one accountable party across all four stages, and it is the reason to buy the diagnosis here rather than somewhere cheaper.

How the four stages work

A 30-minute peer perspective conversation.

Not a sales meeting. A conversation about whether this addresses a problem you recognize in your organization, and what you would need to see to hold the answer under scrutiny from your CFO and your board.

Book the thirty minutes

Pick a time on the calendar

Who you get

Rajeev, who runs the engagement. Not a qualifier.

Bring one workflow you already know is painful. We trace it one or two layers out loud with you, tell you what we would need to see to answer it properly, and say what we could not answer.

Book 30 minutesWhat the two weeks are