Notes from the firms we are building this on.
Field notes for founders, partners, and delivery leaders of IT services and consulting firms. Specific, restrained, written for operators. Published when we have something worth saying, not on a schedule.
Get the next note when it ships.
One short piece every two weeks. Consulting operating model, the agent layer, margin discipline. Operator length. No tracking pixels. Unsubscribe in one click.
ConsultancyOS vs Kantata vs Mavenlink vs Office plus Notion.
A buyer's guide for IT services firm owners choosing the system underneath the firm.
Read the noteThe case for retainer led revenue in IT services.
Project revenue is the income statement. Retainer revenue is the balance sheet. Most IT services firms are still running the wrong one.
Read the noteThe white label client portal as a loyalty multiplier.
The portal is not a feature. It is the surface your client looks at every Monday. If it does not look like your firm, you are renting their loyalty.
Read the noteWhy your senior partners quietly hate the resource spreadsheet.
It is not the spreadsheet. It is what the spreadsheet does to their week. Until you fix it, your best partners are leaving in their heads.
Read the noteThe four spreadsheets every IT services firm still runs on.
Pipeline. Margin. Forecast. Resource plan. The cost is not the spreadsheet. The cost is the lag.
Read the noteThe bench problem and how to solve it without firing.
Bench is the politest word in consulting. It still means you are paying people to wait. Encoded delivery shrinks bench without shrinking the team.
Read the noteSprint zero for IT services.
Most firms start every engagement at zero. The systematised firm starts at sixty percent. Sprint zero is how.
Read the noteBuilding a partner network worth instrumenting.
Most consulting firms have partner relationships. Almost none have a partner system. The difference compounds.
Read the noteThe forecast that runs the firm, not the firm that chases the forecast.
Most firms forecast on Sunday night. They run on the wrong number all week. The right system forecasts every hour.
Read the noteHow to onboard a new consultant in two weeks instead of six months.
The cost of slow onboarding is the salary you pay before the consultant generates a billable hour. Encoded IP collapses the curve.
Read the noteFive questions to ask your senior partner before they resign.
Practices walk out at 6pm on a Friday. Here is how to know before the resignation lands.
Read the noteWhy your firm's IP walks out at 5pm.
Your methodology lives in three senior heads and a folder of slide decks. That is not IP. That is hostage situation.
Read the noteThe valuation argument. What changes when IP lives in the system.
Buyers pay for what they can keep. When the IP is in the firm and not the partner, the earn out shrinks and the cash at close grows.
Read the noteWhy fixed price beats time and materials for systematised firms.
The hourly model is a tax on systematisation. When agents do the first 60 percent in 30 minutes, the billable hour stops paying you what the work is worth.
Read the noteThe Profit First case for consulting firms.
Stop running the firm by what is left over. Allocate Profit first. Twice a month. The discipline that quietly fixes everything else.
Read the noteThe agent layer. How AI plugs into delivery.
AI in consulting is not the copilot in the sidebar. It is the layer underneath delivery, trained on the firm's IP, governed by the firm's guardrails.
Read the noteThe IP Encoding System in four phases.
How to take the method that lives in your senior consultants' heads and put it into a system that delivers in their voice.
Read the noteRun your consultancy like a software company.
The operating system thesis. Why the next decade belongs to firms that systematise their method, not the firms that hire harder.
Read the note