Consulting
We will tell you when the answer is no.
The same method we use for research, applied to what a client should do about their own work.
The most useful thing a firm like this can tell you is that your problem is smaller than you feared, or that it is not the problem you asked about. Almost nobody is paid to say either.
One of the outcomes our own process allows is a diagnosis that your problem is not agentic infrastructure at all: it is that nobody owns the workflow, and that is a management fix costing nothing. We would rather reach that conclusion in week one than bill for the version where we do not.
What we do
Five things, in the order most clients meet them.
- Agentic Readiness DiagnosticFree, self‑serve, one workflow, about ninety seconds. It can tell you not to buy anything, and often does.
- Execution AuditA fast paid diagnosis of a single process, scoped from the diagnostic’s own output.
- Strategy and roadmapFor when the question is portfolio‑level rather than workflow‑level: which processes, in what order, and which to leave alone.
- Agentic transformationProduction deployment inside an operating business. Months rather than weeks, and we say so before you ask.
- Fractional Chief AI OfficerThe standing method inside your organization, re‑qualified quarterly.
Every one begins with a written diagnosis you see before you sign, and every one can end with us telling you the work is not worth doing.
Scope and fee are set per engagement against your cost of us being wrong, never against a rate card. Verification depth follows the same rule. An audit that wrongly tells you your data is not ready costs you a modest amount. A transformation recommendation that wrongly tells you to automate something costs you a great deal. The checking budget belongs where the consequence is.
You see the diagnosis, and its kill switch, before you sign.
Before any substantial engagement begins, we write this down and give it to you:
- DiagnosisWhat we currently think is wrong.
- InterventionWhat we propose to change.
- Expected outcomeWhat should change if we are right, in measurable terms.
- BaselineWhere you are today.
- CounterfactualWhat happens if you do nothing.
- Key assumptionsWhat has to be true.
- Disconfirming evidenceWhat would make us conclude the diagnosis was wrong.
- Measurement dateWhen we will know.
That document is the proposal. It is not an appendix to one.
We would rather refer you than take the work.
Our qualification criteria include a test most firms cannot afford to ask out loud: if we received no fee either way, would we still recommend 900 Labs for this engagement? Where the answer is no, we refer it elsewhere.
We will not sell work unless, on the evidence available at the time, we have a reasonable basis to believe the value to you materially exceeds the full cost of doing it. Full cost means your people’s time, your management’s attention, implementation, infrastructure, migration and operational disruption. Not our fee.
Named conditions under which we say no
- No accountable sponsor willing to be named and to hold decision rights
- No baseline, and no willingness to establish one
- The binding constraint is managerial, and our work would not address it
- A pilot with no pre‑agreed success and failure criteria, no owner, and no production decision behind it
- Production deployment is impossible on regulatory, data‑residency or contractual grounds
- We are not the right firm
There are five outcomes, not two: accept as proposed, re‑scope, defer with named prerequisites, refer elsewhere, decline. Only the last is a loss, and it buys something.
What we will publish about our own work
A disposition profile rather than a decline rate, because a published decline rate creates an incentive to keep it high and no target should exist. Diagnosis accuracy measured against the engagement hypothesis, once there is enough volume for the number to mean anything.
Both start counting from the first engagement, and neither is published until the number means something.
Start with the free instrument.
Run the diagnostic on one workflow. If it says the workflow is not worth a project, believe it. That result is worth more to you than a proposal, and it costs you nothing.
Or write to a person: hello@900labs.com