Guide / In careful development

A human-reviewed brief for a hard decision.

Guide prepares a decision brief inside Align. It lays out the paths, the reasons, and the tradeoffs. It doesn't decide, act on its own, or move money, and a qualified person checks every brief before you see it.

What Guide does today

How a brief gets made.

Guide's first job is to make a hard business issue easier to understand. It helps prepare the choice. It doesn't make the choice.

  • 01
    Gather approved informationGuide uses only the financial and work data you approve. We also talk with you and your team.
  • 02
    Make the picture clearGuide shows what may be happening, what facts support it, and what information is missing or weak.
  • 03
    Lay out the choicesEach choice shows the likely benefit, effort, limits, and tradeoffs. It also flags when a licensed expert should help.
  • 04
    A human reviews it firstA qualified person checks the brief for accuracy and judgment before it ever reaches you.
  • 05
    You make the decisionBuildLogIQ reviews the brief with you. You choose the path. We record why you chose it and what happens next.
If the information isn't reliable, we stop. A bookkeeper, CPA, or other expert may need to fix it before work continues. During an Align phase, Guide may also prepare a weekly update with open issues, decisions, owners, due dates, and data limits.
What's in a brief

Every brief shows the same five things.

The steps above are how a brief gets made. This is what ends up in it.

Guide Makes the Choices Clear Five steps in a Guide decision brief. One, Context: what is happening and what is at stake. Two, Available Paths: the realistic choices available to the owner. Three, Reasons: why each path may make sense. Four, Tradeoffs: benefits, risks, costs, consequences, and dependencies of each path. Five, Action: once the owner decides, the owner, deliverable, and next checkpoint. Guide does not recommend the path. It shows the available paths, the reasons for each, and the tradeoffs the owner should understand before deciding. A qualified person reviews every brief before the owner sees it. BuildLogIQ Built on trust. Run on precision. Elevated by intelligence. THE ALIGN WORKHORSE Guide Makes the Choices Clear Every important decision should show the context, available paths, reasons for each, the tradeoffs to understand, and what happens next. CONTEXT What is happening and what is at stake. 01 AVAILABLE PATHS The realistic choices available to the owner. 02 REASONS Why each path may make sense. 03 TRADEOFFS Benefits, risks, costs, consequences, and dependencies of each path. 04 ACTION Once the owner decides: owner, deliverable, and next checkpoint. 05 A qualified person reviews every brief before the owner sees it. Guide does not recommend the path. It shows the available paths, the reasons for each, and the tradeoffs the owner should understand before deciding. THE PLUMB BOB STANDARD Committed Intentional Honest Rooted Giving
Context, available paths, reasons, tradeoffs, and what happens once you decide. A qualified person reviews every brief before you see it. Tap to open it full size.
What Guide will never do

Use Guide for help. You stay in charge.

Guide uses approved sources for a clear purpose. Named people review the work. It isn't your CFO, estimator, project manager, safety officer, attorney, accountant, referral broker, or secret rating system.

  • 01
    It never moves money or changes your books.
  • 02
    It never accepts a contract or terminates an employee on your behalf.
  • 03
    It never changes a safety control.
  • 04
    It never sends an introduction or referral without a person approving it first.
  • 05
    It never trains on your private information without your specific authority.
Where Guide could go next

Ideas, not promises.

If Guide proves useful inside Align, we may test it for Connect: checked member profiles, matching a stated need to the right members, draft introductions a member must approve, and meeting summaries built only from what the group agreed to share.

None of that is built, priced, or promised.

How we decide what to build

A feature doesn't get built because we can build it. It has to solve a problem we've seen more than once, earn a client's approval, and prove it works in real use first.

Guide is already at work inside Align

See Guide prove its value. One project at a time.

Today you see Guide inside an Align engagement. It has to prove its value one project at a time.