03How we work
“Strategy” is a vague word. Here's what it actually is on paper.
Every subservice page describes an engagement in terms of the decision it settles. This page describes it in terms of the documents and sessions that land in your hands.
Deliverables describe the work, never the outcome
We can promise the document. We can't promise what happens after.
A consulting engagement can honestly promise the quality and shape of the work product: the depth of the analysis, the rigor behind the recommendation, the clarity of the roadmap. It cannot honestly promise a revenue number, a ranking, or a timeline for a result that depends on decisions and market conditions beyond the engagement's control. Every deliverable below is written in that spirit: concrete about what you receive, silent on outcomes no one can guarantee.
The five shapes
What lands in your hands, in order.
A short, direct written account of the decision as we understand it after the first phase of work: what's actually being decided, what the evidence shows, and where the real disagreement or uncertainty sits.
This exists so the analysis is checkable: you can see exactly what it rests on before any recommendation is made.
A small number of real paths forward (never a long list padded to look thorough), each stated with its logic, its cost, and the specific trade-off it asks you to accept.
The point of this document is to make disagreement possible: you should be able to read it and argue with a specific option, not just nod at a conclusion.
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A recommendation, with the reasoning made explicit
One recommended direction, argued in enough depth that you can carry it into a board meeting or an investor conversation and hold the room yourself: not a slide that only makes sense with us in the room to narrate it.
The sequenced first moves that turn the recommendation into practice:
what happens first, who owns it, and what has to be true within the first 30–90 days for the decision to actually take hold, rather than sit in a folder.
Every major deliverable is walked through live, not emailed cold:
the point is that you understand the reasoning well enough to defend it without us, which is the actual measure of whether the work landed.
What's deliberately not on the list
Stated plainly, before you assume it.
- A guaranteed outcome, ranking, revenue number, or timeline attached to any deliverable: see /about for why, and the honesty standard this whole site holds to.
- A dashboard or software product. Deliverables are analysis and decisions, not a tool license (though where a practice area genuinely calls for a working prototype or model, that's scoped explicitly upfront, not implied).
- An open-ended subscription. A defined-scope or phased engagement ends with a defined deliverable set, not a rolling relationship neither side agreed to.
For the reasoning behind the honesty standard itself, see when Praxis is not the right fit.
Questions
Before you reach out.
- Do I get raw data or analysis files, not just the memo?
- Yes. The underlying models, source lists, and working files behind the recommendation are yours; the memo is the readable summary of them, not a replacement for them.
- What format do deliverables actually arrive in?
- Written documents and working sessions, not a fixed template. A board-facing recommendation and an internal process redesign don't belong in the same slide format, so the format is agreed during scoping, not assumed.
- Does the engagement include implementation, or just the plan?
- It depends on the model: see /how-we-work/engagement-models. A defined-scope engagement typically ends at the roadmap; a phased engagement can carry into execution if that's what the scope calls for.
More on how we work
The rest of the methodology.
- 01Engagement modelsThe three shapes an engagement takes (defined-scope, phased, and advisory retainer), and which fits which kind of decision.
- 02Pricing & scopingWhy nothing is priced off a rate card, what a scope is built from, and the variables that move a quote before you ever see one.
- 04The first callWhat actually gets asked and decided in a scoping conversation, before any quote is written.
Want to see this against your own decision?
Tell us what you're facing and we'll describe, concretely, what the deliverables for that specific engagement would look like.
No obligation · a scoping conversation first