20 minutes · No commitment
From a document nobody opens twice to context your team uses every day
In a firm under 15, how the work actually gets done lives in people's heads, a folder of templates and whatever the last adviser remembers. It holds up until someone resigns, someone new starts, or two people answer the same client question differently in the same week.
MethodWorks builds that knowledge into an AI Business Brain your firm owns. It sits in your files, in your tenancy, under your control. We keep it current and run a loop over it that moves only when a person approves. We claim one thing: 5 hours a week back, per person.
This page carries the loop, the order the products are bought in, and what each one is counted by. Figures are set against your seat mix and come on the call.
The 7 steps, and what happens in each
Context, priorities, observe, decide, approve, write back, measure, then again. It runs so that what leadership decides reaches the people doing the work, through the context they use every day.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Context | The install captures how your firm actually works: the approved processes, the policies, the templates and the language you use with clients. It lands in your files, in your tenancy. |
| 2. Priorities | You set where AI should create value, what gets funded, who owns each piece of work, what success looks like and when to stop. |
| 3. Observe | MethodWorks reads structured signals from the brain and the systems the work already sits in: what moved, what stalled, where two people are pulling against each other, what has gone unactioned past a set period. |
| 4. Decide | You make the calls, on the evidence, on a fixed rhythm. |
| 5. Approve | Nothing changes until a person says yes. |
| 6. Write back | Approved decisions land in the brain as updated context, workflows, skills and instructions. |
| 7. Measure | Against a baseline written down at the start and dated. |
Where the reading stops
The layer reads the shared brain and the systems the work already sits in: mail, calendar, the CRM, the ledger, the project tool. It never reads what an individual types into their own Claude. The test on any signal is whether it reports what a person did with Claude or whether their machine can run Claude, and the first is refused.
That boundary goes to your staff in writing at every install. People work out quickly whether a new system is there to help them or to watch them, and this is the answer they can hold us to.
Who runs the loop
Under 15 staff, you run this loop yourselves between quarterly reviews. Decision Deployment and the Decision Layer are the products that hand the running of it to MethodWorks, and they start at 15.
Nothing bundles, so the order matters
Each rung is bought on its own. None of them is a discount on the next, and none of them runs without the one beneath it.
| Step | What you buy | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Context Install | Always first. Nothing above it runs without the brain built. |
| 2 | Context Layer | Ongoing, and required before anything above it. |
| 3 | Decision Discipline Workshop | Optional, at any band, sold before or alongside the decision products. |
| 4 | Decision Deployment or the Decision Layer | Requires steps 1 and 2 live. |
A firm under 15 buys steps 1 and 2. That is the whole stack at that size and it is a complete one: the brain is built, it stays current, and the loop runs on your own rhythm. What arrives each month is a note per seat covering what moved, what stalled, what is waiting on you, and what has gone unactioned. Once a quarter, a review of the same ground.
The workshop is the one rung that does not depend on headcount. The room is the people who can fund a decision, own a workflow and kill one. Under 15 staff, that is the owner and the seniors.
What each part is counted by
Two clauses govern every line. The Context Install and the Context Layer are counted per seat. Decision Deployment and the Decision Layer are counted per business.
| What you buy | How it is counted | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Context Install, business brain | Per firm, once | All |
| Context Install, leader seat | Per seat, once | All |
| Context Install, front-line seat | Per seat, once | All |
| Context Layer | Per seat, per month | All |
| Decision Discipline Workshop | Per firm, once | Optional at any band |
| Decision Deployment | Per business, per month, on an annual term | 15 to 50 staff |
| Decision Layer | Per business, per month, on an annual term as a minimum | 50 plus staff |
Leader seats
Leader is defined by what the seat carries, never by title. A leader seat is anyone whose environment holds approvals, decision records, or connectors to money and clients: the owner, the partners, the practice manager, the senior advisers. Paraplanners and admin are front-line seats. The definition holds rather than the headcount, so split your seats by that test and you can size the install before we speak.
What sits outside it
Automations beyond the write-back are quoted separately, per build, scoped. Per-seat installs and per-seat maintenance stay outside the per-business products, which is the reason nothing on this ladder bundles into anything else.
Why the figures are not here
The install is priced off your seat mix by role, so the honest answer at 5 seats and the honest answer at 14 seats are different, and one headline price would be wrong for both. Bring your split of leader and front-line seats to the call and you get the real one.
See the hours before you see a number
The calculator on the booking page takes your seat counts by role and returns the hours the install is built to give back, at 5 hours a week per person across 48 working weeks. Put your own hourly rate in and it prices those hours in your numbers rather than ours. Then you pick a time.