Chapter 024 min read
A report is not a result.
Most AI advice is sold in the wrong order: the strategy first, the implementation in a later proposal. I would turn it round.
You are buying a deck
The proposal is always tidy. Some ten weeks, a team of smart people, workshops with your managers, and at the end a report: opportunities ranked by impact and effort, a roadmap, a business case.
I have nothing against the people who write these. Often it is good work. My objection is to what you hold at the end. Ten weeks in, you own a result a deck. On Monday the work runs the way it did in January, and the last page says: next step, implementation. That is a new proposal, with a new budget.
The map goes stale
An executive at a software company described it to us better than I can. Expensive consultants come in, he said, and interview everyone about how they work: which systems, which handovers. They draw the process maps. Then they leave, and nobody keeps the maps up to date. Somewhere on the shared drive there is an old blueprint of the organisation that no longer matches it.
A construction company told me a version with consequences. A large firm had built them an overview of the margin on every project, and it was good. Then they changed systems. The overview stopped filling itself, and for months they could not see their margins at all. The knowledge had left with the people who built it.
The best facts are never in the room
Workshops are held with everyone managers. But the facts that decide whether a rebuilt process works are held by the people who do the work, and they are at their desks while the workshop is on.
Think of the discount that keeps your biggest customer. It is agreed by phone, by someone who was never invited. Or the week’s hours, reported by a photo of a whiteboard. No workshop finds these. You find them by asking every team, one by one, how the work goes on an ordinary Tuesday.
Build first, write the strategy after
I think the order is the wrong way round. Implementation should come first, and the strategy after. You learn more from one process that runs than from fifty that are ranked, because a running process shows what works in your systems, with your people, with your exceptions.
In the weeks a report takes, you can map how the organisation operates, rebuild a first process and measure what it saves.
The strategy gets better too. A roadmap that rests on something that already runs is worth more than one that rests on sticky notes.
One question before you sign
Ask it of every party, us included: at the end, what will run that does not run today? If the answer is a document, you know what you are buying.
When a consultancy is the better choice.
- You need a strategy for the whole organisation before anything changes.
- The question is not about processes: a merger, a new market, a reorganisation.
- Your own teams have the time and the people to carry out the advice.
Then a consultancy fits better. We’ll say so in the first call.
Questions
What teams ask when they compare.
Do you also give advice?
Only about what we build. The audit ranks your processes by the hours they cost and shows which ones AI can take over. Advice on strategy, structure or a reorganisation is a consultancy's work, not ours.
Can you work alongside our consultancy?
Yes. When a consultancy has set the direction, we rebuild the processes it points at and measure the result, so the advice turns into processes that run.
Who carries out the change?
We do, with your people. A Grasp team rebuilds each process in your own tools, your teams decide which steps AI takes over, and every workflow gets an owner on your side.