ERIC PALMERStrategy & AI Consulting
Minneapolis · Remote Get in touch

How engagements work

Engagements are scoped so you know what you are getting before it starts, and so the deliverable is something a decision actually gets made from.

1 · Scope the question

A short diagnostic conversation, no charge. The mandate you arrived with is usually not quite the question that needs answering — that gets settled first, in writing, before any work begins.

2 · Assemble the evidence

Internal data, market data, and the interviews that surface what the data cannot. Sources named. Where the evidence is thin, that is stated rather than papered over.

3 · Build the argument

A recommendation with the reasoning attached, the assumptions it rests on made explicit, and the strongest counter-case argued honestly — because someone in the room will make it.

4 · Deliver something decidable

A working session and a deck your C-suite or board can act on. Where a working system is the more useful artifact than a document, that gets built and handed over running.

What you get

What a deliverable looks like: a written recommendation, the evidence base behind it, the assumptions and their sensitivities, and a decision-ready deck. Where a build is in scope, the running system and its documentation come with it.

Where this fits, and where it does not

A good fit
  • A broad mandate that has to become a decision.
  • An AI question where the honest answer might be ‘not yet, and here is why’.
  • Work that will be argued with by people who know the business well.
Not a fit
  • Staff augmentation by the hour.
  • A deck to justify a decision already made.
  • Anything where the answer is required to come out a particular way.

Start with the diagnostic

Tell me what is stuck. If it is not something I should take, I will say so and point you somewhere better.

Start a conversation

Background and track record →