Getting started

A firm does not start by picking a being. It starts by being understood. The first being to arrive is not there to do a job; it is there to map the firm, the way an engineer embedded with a customer would, and to come back with a plan the founder can say yes to, one hire at a time.

1. The being maps the firm (in build)

A first being joins with a limited charter: read, ask, and write things down. It works through the firm’s processes as they actually run, not as they are described: where an enquiry arrives, who touches it, which systems it passes through, where it waits, what “done” means. It maps the team as it is, person by person: their roles, what each is responsible for, what each actually spends their week on, and where the administrative weight sits. It writes all of this into the firm’s record, so that for the first time the firm has a queryable picture of its own operations.

2. It proposes the hires (in build)

From the map, the being proposes what to add: which seats would take the most weight off the people who carry it, in what order, and what each would look like. A proposed hire is not a job title. It is a complete package: the charter, the procedures the seat will run written out step by step, the schedule the work needs, the systems it will need a seat in and the permissions on each, the workers that will do the routine steps, and the points where a person must decide or sign. The founder reads it as they would read a hiring plan, and says yes, change it, or not yet.

3. The firm’s operating system is set up (in build)

Each firm gets its own operating system: its own database, kernel and connections, in the country the firm operates in. The functions the plan needs are switched on, finance first, and the connections to the firm’s existing systems are made. Nothing the firm already uses is replaced.

4. The beings and workers are shaped (in build)

Each approved seat is filled by a being fitted to it, with its own name, identity, presence and store, and by the workers assigned to it. The first being helps shape them, because it knows the firm. Every being starts with the authority its charter grants and no more, and grows into more as the record shows it can be trusted with it.

5. The firm runs, and the beings improve it (the model we run ourselves)

From then on the beings do the work, the workers push the routine through, the record shows who did what, and the beings keep bringing the problems they meet and the improvements they propose. The founder’s job becomes the decisions and the signatures, and the reading of a record they can trust.

Today

We are running this on ourselves first. Our own firm is the first mapped, our Chief of Staff is the first being, and the operating system that runs us is the one a customer will get. We take on a small number of firms while the path above is built, and we say plainly at every step what is live and what is not.