About

Most of the work arrives already diagnosed. Somebody has decided what the problem is, and what they want is to stop thinking about it.

That's rarely where the cost is. It's the exception that used to be rare and now takes up half of everyone's week. It's the work that only moves when one particular person is at their desk. Nobody puts either of those in a brief. By then they've stopped looking like problems. They look like the job.

So we spend the first part of any project working out what's actually expensive, and we'll say so when the thing you asked for isn't worth building. What we make after that runs inside the operation rather than beside it. The exceptions get handled like the rule. The work keeps moving on the days that person isn't in. And nobody has to become a better version of themselves for it to work.