The working practice · One client at a time · London & remote

The method

We find out how your business runs and rebuild the parts that slow it down. You get more done with the people you already have.

Steps Your week Enquire
§ 01 · Record
Recorded and unrecorded work

Written record

Your written process is what the business believes it does. Your systems, procedures and spreadsheets hold a real record and it is worth having. It is incomplete in one way: it holds only 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 and in the client meeting. It is in the head of the person who has done the job for years. It is on the personal list they keep because the system does not hold it.

An agent scoped against the written record is built against a description of the business. It passes the demo, because a demo runs on the tidy version. It fails in ordinary use, because ordinary use is not tidy.

Where the record stops
Half oneWritten down
Systems and the data in them
Spreadsheets and shared folders
The documented process
Anything somebody chose to record
A real record, worth having
Half twoWhere the work happens
On the phone
In the corridor
In the client meeting
In the head of the person who has done it for 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 system that works in ordinary use
Most AI work is scoped against the left column, because that is the half you can read. The judgement is in the right column.
§ 02 · Steps
Nothing built before step three

Steps

01 · ONE DAY, ON SITE
Preliminary audit.
We write down the canonical record: what is documented and where it is held. Then we write down the map of every channel where the work happens and nothing is recorded. The second half is usually the longer one. You get both documents on the day.
02 · TWO TO FOUR WEEKS
Passive observation.
Those channels are captured while the work carries on as normal. You buy the capture, you own the recording and you run it. We specify what needs capturing. You decide how far to go, and you know the cost when you decide, because we price it at the end of step one.
03
Real procedure and AI strategy.
A written procedure built from what happened rather than from what the manual says happens. In the same document, where AI is worth using and where it is not.
04 · IF NEEDED
Implementation.
Either an operating system such as Maxy that runs the repeatable work, or Anthropic Claude AI training for the people whose judgement runs it. Step three decides which, and it can conclude that neither is needed.
Finding out
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 the capture, own the recording and run it.
03
Real procedure and AI strategy
What the business does, written down, and where AI is worth using.
Step three decides whether the work slowing you down is work a system should run or work a person should be better at. One of the three outcomes is that nothing is built.
Outcome A
An operating system such as Maxy
The work is repeatable, it crosses several systems, and it can be handed over with a person signing off the parts that matter.
BuiltAgents that run the work, with an owner, an off switch and a record of every step.
Outcome B
Claude training
Your judgement runs the work from start to finish. The slow part is how the job gets done.
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 handover in the wrong order, a form filled in twice, a decision nobody owns. This happens, and we say so.
BuiltNothing. Step three was the delivery and you keep it.
Step 04 · Implementation · reached only through outcome A or outcome B
Three of the four steps are finding out. The fourth is the only one that builds anything, and it is the one you can be told you do not need.

Step 01 is not the free self-assessment. The self-assessment is twenty questions you answer about your own business, scored on screen, at no cost. The preliminary audit is a day of Joel Smalley's time on site, writing down what is true. It is chargeable work that stands on its own. You do not wait a month before you have anything. The two documents from step 01 are yours at the end of that day, and you keep them if you stop there.

§ 03 · Purpose
Owner and staff

Your week

The parts of your job that do not need you stop needing you. You did not take the job to key the same details into a second system, chase an email, or write the same covering note again. Those things take the hours you would rather spend on the work you are good at.

The machine takes the parts that do not need a person. That time goes to the parts that do: the call where you judge the mood, and the client who needs you.

This is also why the method works. A capture that people believe is a redundancy exercise produces an inaccurate record, because everyone behaves differently while it runs. The method gives a true answer only when staff know that nobody is being replaced.

Nobody is replaced. For an owner this is a question of growth. No engagement we run is a way to end up with fewer people.

Owner

The next increase in work does not have to come with an increase in payroll. The capacity is already there in the people you employ, and today it is spent on work that does not need a person.

Staff

You get those hours 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.

§ 04 · Conditions
Disclosure and consent

Conditions

Staff are told on day one. Before anything is captured, your staff are told in your words that the work is being watched and not the workers. We do not run the capture quietly and we do not run it on people who have not been told.

You can decline any channel. A channel you do not want captured is not captured. That channel stays undocumented, and the procedure has a known gap in it. You make that call knowing the consequence in advance.

§ 05 · Placement
Discovery and analysis

Engagement

The method is what discovery and analysis consist of. Discovery produces the canonical record and the channel map. Observation and the real procedure come between discovery and analysis. Analysis then takes the real procedure apart rather than the written one. Rebuild and handover are unchanged.

Engagement stages →

§ 06 · Afterwards
After the engagement

Deliverables

A business cannot describe its own working accurately from the inside. That is the reason this step exists. The usual conclusion is that you need somebody outside watching you permanently.

You buy the capture, you own the recording and you keep the procedure it produces. When we leave you hold an accurate record of your own business, and you can produce it again the next time something changes. You do not need us to describe it. If you want us back you can have us back.

You keepThe channel map: every place the work happens, recorded or not.
You keepThe recording, on tooling you bought and run.
You keepThe real procedure and the strategy that says where AI is worth using.

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