Situation eight
Something's off, and I can't tell if it's us or them.
You are paying for things. Some of them are working. You can't tell which, and the vendor's report says everything is fine.
In your words
Is this you?
“It was not a budget issue. We had the resources. It just never worked. I'm still not sure if it was the ideas, the strategy, or the people.”
“I got fifteen-page PDFs with graphs, which I didn't dig into because the reports looked professional. Six months in, I logged in.”
“They seem like very nice people, so I don't want to jump the gun. Maybe this really is something that takes this long?”
“Nobody internally wants to be the one who says it out loud.”
“I know what's wrong, but I need it validated, and I need someone to help do it the first time, so I can learn.”
The diagnosis
What's usually going on
Three things make this specifically hard to resolve, and none of them is technical:
- The reporting is designed to be unfalsifiable. A professional-looking deck with rising lines is not evidence; it is a genre. You stopped reading it because it never said anything, and stopping reading it is what let it run for another six months.
- Niceness is doing structural work. They are pleasant, responsive and likeable, and that has been substituting for results for long enough that raising it now feels like an accusation.
- Nobody internal wants to own the call. Whoever says it out loud also owns having chosen them, or having not noticed sooner. So it gets discussed sideways and never decided.
The audit is the product
The point is not to fire anyone. It is to establish, from the actual data and in a frozen frame, what is working, what is not, and which of those two the vendor is responsible for. Sometimes the answer is that the vendor is fine and the brief was wrong. That is a result.
The category
The hard call, made well
This whole category, Recovery and Transition, is about making the hard decisions, and taking the tough actions, in a way that feels good, is sustainable, and has a legitimate lasting positive effect on everything involved.
This one is external, a vendor, an agency, a stack, a relationship that has gone wrong. The other is internal and cultural, a change you chose, walked through the people it affects.
Scope
What this is not
- Not a hit job. If the vendor is fine and the brief was wrong, the report says the brief was wrong.
- Not a legal review. If you are heading for a dispute, get a lawyer as well.
- Not a replacement agency pitch. I don't take over the work, and I'm not introducing you to my friend who does.
How to buy it
Three ways in
Three depths, one number. Find out, fix it, or hold it while it gets fixed. All three are $2,500, because what you need is not knowable before we look. Almost everyone starts at the first.
lead option
Audit & Suggest
$2,50030 days, frozen frame
What happens
Frozen frame means we agree a window, usually the last ninety days, and nothing gets changed inside it while we look. Otherwise you are auditing a moving target and everyone gets to explain the numbers away.
Days 1–10
The evidence
Contracts, briefs, reports, access, and the actual output. Not the summary of the output.
Days 11–20
The read
What was promised, what was delivered, what moved, and what would have moved anyway.
Days 21–30
The verdict
Working, not working, and whose. Plus what to do about each.
What you get
What you get, every time, in three parts:
- Everything you need to understand it.
- The models and the methods to see it through without me.
- The other routes, and why they aren't taken, shouldn't be taken, or can't be taken yet.
The price
Half at signature, half on delivery.
full engagement
Audit & Remediate
$2,50030 days +
What happens
The audit, and then the fixing. Renegotiating the brief, replacing the vendor, or rebuilding what they were supposed to have built.
Same number as the audit alone. The depth you need is not something you can know before we look, so it is not something you should be quoted for before we look.
The price
Same price. Right of refusal at intake is what protects this, not a rate card.
full engagement
Audit & Manage
$2,500windowed
What happens
I hold the relationship for a defined window while it either recovers or ends. For when there is no one internal who can own it without it becoming personal.
The price
Same price again.
Not sure
If you're not sure
Readiness, $1,000, credits in.
Peter on this page
(coming)
On camera
“The reports look professional and say nothing, so you stopped reading them. That is how six months goes by. The audit is not about firing anyone, it is about finding out which half is working.”
Start with a call.
Up to ninety minutes on one real problem, and you set the length. If it was worth something, pay what it was worth. If it was not, we shake hands and you owe me nothing.