The Census
One facilitated day inside your firm, counting the work that never reaches an invoice. By the end of it you'll know how much of the week goes on chasing, drafting, reporting, and following up, what that costs you, and which of it your people could hand over so they get their time back for the work clients actually pay for.
The method
Somebody sees a demonstration, likes it, and buys it. Then the firm spends the next six months trying to find work for the thing it bought. There was nothing wrong with the software. It was just never tailored to your firm.
Counting first turns that around. Once the work is visible and weighed properly, the next step gets much clearer: automate it, assist it, fix the process, keep it human, or leave it alone for now.
The other half of it is who does the counting. People support what they help to create. Frontline staff know exactly where the week goes, because it goes on them. They rarely get asked. Management knows what the firm is trying to be, and where the money leaks. Put both around one table for a day and you get the whole picture.
I facilitate. Your people count. Nothing about the day requires you to know anything about AI.
The day
It isn't a rigid timetable, and firms run at different speeds. This is the shape of the day, and the order things tend to happen in.
First thing
Your boardroom, your people, one day set aside. No laptops, no phones out on the table, no recording. Card and pen, and a printed roll unrolled down the length of the table. Ideally, I'd like to include frontline staff as well as management, because half the work we're looking to track never appears in a management report.
The analogue rule is practical: computers distract people, and the counting goes better with everyone looking at the same table. There's no recording and no transcript. At the end of the day I photograph the roll so I can write the AI Roadmap, and the roll itself stays with your firm.
No preparation needed.Through the morning
Most work that never reaches an invoice goes on the roll, put forward by the team or person who does it. The report reformatted for the third time. The call notes nobody wrote up. The follow-up that never got logged. The chasing, endless chasing, for something agreed weeks ago.
It gets loud around mid-morning. Somebody says a job takes ten minutes and three people at the far end of the table look up. That disagreement is the most useful thing that happens all day, and it only happens because both ends of the firm are in the room.
Your handwriting, not mine.After lunch
By lunchtime you know what the work is. In the afternoon we put numbers on it: how often, how long, where it lands, what gets pushed to the evening because of it, and what the firm doesn't get to do while it's being done.
The Census counts work, not people. I never ask who does a job or whether the firm needs them; I ask what the task is, how much effort it takes, and what the firm gets back for it. We're looking for the work your team would be glad to hand over, and the work they'd be right to keep.
Work counted, then valued.Before you go home
The day ends with a lot of clarity, with a direction and sometimes with small decisions. Automate a no-brainer, or a process fix that needs no AI at all.
Your team's only job is to be in the room. Everything between the steps is mine.
To be clear
I don't score your firm's maturity, and we don't quiz you to pass anything. Most firms aren't ready by those measures, but in reality every firm can start small and build immediately. The output of the day shows us where the biggest outcome is likely to be.
We don't talk about software or solutions before the work has been counted. That comes after you know what you want to address and when.
The Census counts work, not people. What gets weighed is the task: how often it happens, how heavy it is, and what it crowds out. Never the people doing it.
Afterwards
It contains all of the tasks we outlined, how much time they take and how we might address them.
A written plan in your hands two days later: what was counted, what it weighs, what I'd hand over first and why, and what I'd leave well alone for now. Plain English.
The AI Roadmap lands, and then it's yours to sit with, argue about, and put in front of whoever else needs to see it. Any deployment price in the AI Roadmap holds for 90 days, and so does the credit below.
The Census is €1,850. If you deploy with me within 90 days, the full €1,850 comes off the deployment cost.
Worth knowing:
If you think that your company could benefit from an AI Census, reach out and let's discuss setting a date.
If you'd rather start smaller, most firms start with an hour of my opinion. The AI Orientation is €450, and if a Census isn't the right next step for you, that hour is where you'll hear it.