The Single Issue: a written second opinion on one working relationship

Four of those meetings are on the calendar in the next month. The next board pack is not, in 30 days or in 45. You can check both numbers against your own diary, which is the point. The decision is arithmetic, not judgment, and it happens before payment.

The floor is three occasions in the window, with at least two of them already on the calendar. Not because three is where a pattern becomes serious; it is often serious at one. Because below three, no forecast can be wrong in a way that means anything. With one occasion, whatever happens looks like a result: a coin landing the way it was always going to land. With two, the only forecast strict enough to mean something is two of two, and one off day on the other side makes it a miss for reasons that have nothing to do with the ask. At three, a forecast of two of three both says something and survives one off day. That is the smallest number at which the grade is honest, and I would rather turn down a real situation than sell a forecast that cannot fail.

Three other things are checked at the same time. Nothing already scheduled would remove the occasion inside the window: a departure, a reorganization, a raise. A scheduled event that raises the cost of the pattern is fine, and is usually why you are writing; one that ends the relationship whatever you do is not, because nothing can be graded against it. What the other person does is something that could be seen or heard, not a trait. And at least one thing in the pattern is something you did, because the forecast changes your side of it.

Sample: a decline note, in full. Composite B. This case is constructed for the page.

Thanks for sending this through. It is a real situation and the kind of work I handle, but I cannot build a forecast from what is here, so I would rather ask than accept and write something you cannot check.

The behavior you describe happens around the board pack, and by your own answer the next one falls outside the coming thirty days. The brief ends in one forecast with a date, and you grade it at the end of the window. For it to be capable of being wrong there has to be something inside the window for it to be wrong about, which is what this process is built around. Here there is nothing, so there would be nothing to grade. I am going to pass for now. There is no charge for this review.

What I am missing is at least three occasions inside the next month where this could surface. You mentioned a weekly one-to-one. Does any version of this pattern turn up there? If it does, reply with what it looks like and I will look again. If not, no problem at all.

Johanna

End of sample.

Not the situation, and not the reading of it.

I could tell you what is happening in that case. The pattern is legible, and I would have views about it within an hour. What I could not do is tell you whether those views were right, because at a third of one occurrence a month there is nothing inside the window that would settle it either way.

So the honest description is narrow: I declined the gradeability, not the readability.

That distinction invites an obvious question, and it deserves a straight answer. If the reading is available, why not sell that on its own, for less?

Because a reading you cannot check is worth what readings are worth, and you can get one anywhere, from anyone, at any price. Plenty of people will tell you what is going on with your co-founder. Some of them will be right. None of them will tell you in advance how you would know.

The only thing here that is not already freely available is the part that can fail. Selling the rest without it would be selling the easy half and keeping the money.

Two things are worth noticing, and they are the two things I would want to check if I were you.

The brief ends in a sentence that can be wrong. A count, a named behavior, dates, and a stated condition under which the read was mistaken. You grade it at the end of the window. If it is wrong, the second read is free, and it goes into the published record as a miss.

The decline turned down money on arithmetic you can verify. That is the part that is difficult to fake, and it is why the brief is worth reading. Anyone can show you their best work. The gate is what makes the best work mean something.

Where it comes from. The brief opens with the situation as you described it: the ask you already make, in the words you already use, what it reliably produces, and how often, in counts. You have lived this, so you can check it against memory on the spot. In the session I read it back and ask whether it matches what you have seen. If it does not, the read is wrong, and I would rather find that out in the room than at the end of the window. The two sections after that say what you do next each time and why it locks with this particular person. The forecast is built on those three.

The change. One alteration to an ask you already make, chosen because you can make it without the other person agreeing to anything and without telling them a read exists. It is built from your own words and confirmed with you in writing after the session, before it goes in the brief. Never a new demand, never a threat, never a trap. In the sample it is one added step at the close of a meeting you already hold, and one sentence said out loud.

The occasions. The dates inside the window on which you will make the change, listed one by one. There have to be at least three, and at least two must already be on the calendar when the window is set. That is the gate, above, and a case that cannot clear it is declined before anything is paid. In the sample there are four, and the one on the day the brief lands is left out.

The forecast. The response, as something a third party could read off a record, with a time limit and a count: on at least this many of the occasions, this will happen by this point. A note in a log, a message, a date in a calendar. Not a tone, not a mood. In the sample the act is a note in the decision log or a message to you that names one of that Monday's decisions, the time limit is Wednesday morning, and the count is two of four. The forecast can be that the response you want is not coming. That is still a forecast, and it is still graded. For someone deciding whether to stay or go, it is often the more useful answer.

The baseline. What carries on if nothing changes, in the same countable terms, taken from your own history. In the sample: eight meetings, nine decisions, nine reopened, zero concerns raised by any route that reached you first. A prediction with nothing to compare it against is not a forecast; it is a hope with a date on it.

What would make this wrong. The forecast turned around, in the same count. The two rows are written as opposites, so every graded outcome is one or the other. Hit or Miss, nothing in between.

What would make an occasion not count. An occasion that does not happen, happens without the condition the change depends on, or passes without the change made as written, comes out of the count. It does not count against the forecast and it does not count for it. The noun in this label is whatever your occasion is: in the sample, a meeting. If fewer than three occasions count, the forecast is not graded. Not graded is not a grade; it is recorded as not graded and published as such.

What would void the forecast. A change in the situation itself rather than in the counts: one of you on leave for the window, a role change, a departure. A void forecast was never tested. It is recorded as void, and it is not a miss.

During the window. After each occasion, record what happened. Do not argue and do not repeat the ask on the spot; the next occasion is the next occasion. Anything you cannot place as counting or not goes to me in writing and is settled before the last day, never after. There is no coaching during the window and no other support, by design. The test only means something if the ask stays as written, and a forecast I could steer would not be worth grading.

The check. On the last day you grade it, against the three counting questions set out under the grade, below. Hit or Miss follows from the counts. A forecast graded wrong earns a second read at no charge, claimed within thirty days of the check.

The forecast names an ask and the response it gets. On the last day of the window you answer three questions about what actually happened. How many times the situation came up. How many times you made the ask as written. How many times the response was the one in the forecast. One occasion counts once, however many times something happened inside it. You answer them before I say anything about how the window went, and the grade comes out of those three numbers rather than out of what I think of them.

The rule is in the forecast before the window opens. The forecast is gradeable if at least three occasions count, and an occasion counts only if it happened, with its condition, and you made the ask as written. If you did, and the named response occurred at least the number of times the forecast names, it is a hit. If it occurred fewer times, it is a miss. There is no third grade, because a third grade is somewhere for misses to go. A forecast can also end not graded or void. Both conditions are written in the box before the window opens, and both are counted and published beside the hits and the misses, so neither is somewhere for a miss to go after the fact. The record shows the raw figures for every case, "two of three, threshold two, hit" or "one of three, threshold two, miss," so the difference between a near miss and a clean one is visible without a category to hide it in.

The second question is there on purpose. If the window ran away from you and the ask never got made as written, that is not the forecast being wrong, and it is not graded as though it were. It is recorded as not graded, with the reason.

If it missed, two things follow. The first is a second read at no charge, claimed within thirty days of the check: a new brief, from the same account plus whatever the window produced, ending in a new forecast on new dates. It does not include a further session. If the situation itself has changed, I may ask for one, at no charge. The second is that the miss goes into the published record next to everything else.

A forecast graded wrong is a Miss. Two other outcomes are not grades.

Not graded. A forecast is not graded if fewer than three occasions counted. An occasion does not count if it did not happen, happened without its condition, or passed without the ask made as written. Either way the test did not run, so it can be run once more: the same change and the same forecast, in a new window of the same length, on dates fixed before it opens, at no charge. The new window has to clear the same arithmetic as the first. If it cannot, or if it also ends not graded, the case closes and there is no second read. A forecast is also recorded as not graded if you never send the count, and then nothing further follows, because a new window and a second read both depend on the count. This applies to the first forecast. The window of a second read is the last.

Void. A void forecast was never tested, and it cannot be run again, because the situation it was written for has changed. If the event that voided it was already scheduled, or you told me about it before I accepted the case, I accepted it knowing, and a second read is yours at no charge, on the same terms as after a miss. If the event was not disclosed to me before acceptance, or was something neither you nor I could reasonably have known, there is no second read.

No window is ever extended. A new window is a separate window with its own dates. The first is recorded as not graded, the second as whatever it turns out to be, and both appear in the record.

In every one of these the fee stands. It bought the brief, and the brief was delivered.

Every outcome is published as what it is, beside the hits and the misses.

Results are published once a quarter, misses included, and publication does not depend on the results being good. What gets published is the count, not the case: for each window, the raw figures and the outcome, such as "two of three, threshold two, hit". No sector, no role, no location, no dates, and no wording from any ask or forecast. An update goes out only when at least three new results are ready, and the rows are not in date order, so that no row can be tied to one case. A result that would be alone waits for the next quarter. No situation, no other person, no client, ever. There is no "with your permission" exception, so you will never be asked.

If you do not grade, the forecast is recorded as not graded, and it stays there. The window to claim a second read runs from the day you grade, not from the day the brief arrived.

You keep the brief and the graded appendix, which is the forecast with your three counts and the outcome written in.

No testimonials, no case studies, no client logos, no count of reads delivered. The cases above are composites and say so. If you are looking for evidence that this has already worked for someone like you, it does not exist yet, and this page is not going to imply otherwise.

What exists instead is structure.

The forecast can be wrong, in writing, on a date, and when it fails, the failure is recorded where you can see it. The gate turns down money before it is paid, on arithmetic you can check with a calculator; you watched it do that above. The grade is computed from your numbers, not awarded by me.

None of this is proof. It is the structure that makes proof possible, and hard to fake once it exists.

Your side of it is five sittings: the questions, the call, the written account, the session, and the count at the end of the window. And one line by email to confirm the words. Nothing on this page expires, and there is no counter on it.

The fee buys the brief. It does not buy the outcome, and it is not returned if you decide not to make the ask. If the account has not arrived within 30 days of the call, or payment has not followed within 30 days of the account, the case closes and what you sent is deleted.

Not legal advice, and not privileged: I am not a lawyer. What you send me and what I send you, including your written account and the brief, is not protected by legal privilege and could be demanded in a dispute. If that matters in your situation, ask your lawyer before you write to me. Not mediation: I do not contact the other person, and nothing reaches them from me or through me. Not therapy. Not a verdict on the other person: the brief does not ask whether they are decent. It forecasts what they do in response to one ask, on listed dates. Not coaching: one brief, one forecast, one grade, and then the work ends. There is no retainer and no program of sessions. Not ongoing work: the engagement ends at the check, unless a missed forecast earns the free second read or a forecast that was not graded is run once more. What I decline at any count is listed under the gate, above.

Working relationships only. If the other person is family, it is the business between you that gets read, not the family.

And it is your side only. Nothing is collected from the other person. You refer to them by a role or a label, never a name, from your first email on. Nothing identifying them is wanted or kept. I keep your written account for no more than 200 days and the brief for three years, and then both are deleted. The privacy notice has the detail. They are never named, scored, or typed, and what they think stays unresolved; the brief says so where it matters.

One person: Johanna Farrimond. Physics and electrical engineering degrees. An MSc in Information Assurance. Twenty years in IT consulting, a decade of it in classified government networks. My job was to say in writing what a system would do under load or under failure, before it did it, and someone had to act on what I wrote.

Forecasting a network and forecasting a request between two people are different problems. What carries over is the discipline: state what will happen, with a date and a count, and publish whether it did.

I wrote these for my own decisions before I sold one, dated, then graded against what happened. The process has not changed.