A working Business Playbook
Documented systems, processes, and procedures for your 8 to 12 core processes, hosted in Trainual, Whale, Notion, or SharePoint. Owned by your business, searchable, navigable, ready for deployment.
Flagship engagement
ControlShift™ Phase 1
Core Codification · 16 weeks
The flagship engagement. Sixteen weeks covering the first four stages of ControlShift, Insights, Design, Capture, Codify, applied to your 8 to 12 core processes. The deliverable is a working Business Playbook plus the underlying Codified Operational Intelligence™.
What It Is
The codification engagement, scoped honestly.
Most operations work either over-promises (multi-quarter open-ended engagements) or under-delivers (a binder of SOPs that nobody reads). Phase 1 sits in the middle: a focused engagement that produces a real, useable, durable asset on a predictable timeline.
Sixteen weeks. Four ControlShift stages. Your 8 to 12 core processes. One Business Playbook at the end, with the underlying Codified Operational Intelligence™ that makes it more than just documentation.
Phase 1 is where the asset gets built. Phase 2 is where it goes live in the team. They're sold separately so you can evaluate Phase 1's output before committing to Phase 2.
Deliverables
What you have at week 16
Codified Operational Intelligence™
The decision rules, reasoning, edge cases, and judgement patterns that make the procedures useful. The intelligence layer that distinguishes a working Playbook from a polite document.
A Phase 2 handoff plan
A scoped, sequenced plan for deploying the Playbook to your team, which teams first, which tooling integrations, what drift-detection rhythm. Ready for the follow-on engagement when you're ready to commit.
How It Works
Four phases of work over 16 weeks
Each phase has its own character because the work is genuinely different. Brief overview below; the 16-Week Roadmap article walks each one week by week.
Weeks 1–3
Diagnose
Identify your 8 to 12 core processes. Map the operational gravity. Produce a written recommendation.
Weeks 4–6
Architect
Design blueprints per core process. Target shape: inputs, activities, outputs, feedback loops, ownership.
Weeks 7–12
Extract
AI-structured interviews surface the operational knowledge in your senior people's heads. The biggest stretch of the engagement.
Weeks 13–16
Structure
Captured material becomes a usable Business Playbook hosted in your chosen platform. Phase 2 handoff plan delivered alongside.
Pricing
Starting at $15,000 CAD
Fixed-fee engagement. No hourly billing, no time-and-materials surprises.
Phase 1 starts at $15,000 CAD. Your final quote depends on:
- Team size
- Core-process complexity (number of processes, depth of decision-rule capture needed)
- Existing documentation maturity (starting from scratch vs. refining what exists)
What's in scope
- 8 to 12 core processes captured and codified
- ControlShift stages 1–4: Insights, Design, Capture, Codify
- AI-structured interviews with your senior operators
- Business Playbook hosted in your chosen platform (Trainual, Whale, Notion, or SharePoint)
- Phase 2 handoff plan delivered at week 16
What's out of scope
Anything outside the bullets above is quoted separately. Common out-of-scope items:
- Additional processes beyond the 8 to 12 core (quoted as a follow-on cycle)
- Phase 2 deployment (separate engagement)
- Custom tooling integrations (typically Phase 2 work)
- Ongoing maintenance (the ControlShift Retainer)
- Standalone policy work (the Policy Development service)
Out-of-scope work is honest pricing, not nickel-and-diming. We name the scope upfront and stick to it.
How to get a specific quote
Two routes:
- A free 30-minute discovery call that ends with a specific quote, delivered within 48 hours.
- The $497 CAD ControlShift Insights Assessment, a 45-90 minute self-serve diagnostic that produces a 40+ page report.
Common Questions
Phase 1, answered.
What is ControlShift Phase 1?
A 16-week engagement that captures and codifies the 8 to 12 core processes that drive most of your business's value. Covers the first four stages of ControlShift: Insights (diagnose), Design (architect target state), Capture (extract operational knowledge), and Codify (structure into a Business Playbook).
Deliverable is a working Business Playbook plus the underlying Codified Operational Intelligence, owned by your business, hosted in the platform your team uses, ready for deployment in Phase 2.
Why 16 weeks and only core processes?
Service businesses have 20 to 50 distinguishable processes. Eight to twelve of them carry most of the value, the ones that drive revenue, carry key-person risk, or shape everything downstream.
Scoping Phase 1 to those processes makes the timeline real (16 weeks versus an open-ended engagement) and produces meaningful depth in each core process rather than shallow coverage of everything. Non-core processes get tackled in follow-on cycles once the foundation is in place.
What's the deliverable at week 16?
Three concrete artifacts:
- A working Business Playbook for your core processes, hosted in your chosen platform (Trainual, Whale, Notion, or SharePoint).
- The underlying Codified Operational Intelligence, decision rules with reasoning, edge cases, judgement patterns.
- A Phase 2 handoff plan that scopes the deployment work.
The Playbook is yours. Expansive EDGE doesn't host it on our infrastructure or charge subscription access.
Do I need to do Phase 2 after Phase 1?
Not contractually. Phase 1 delivers a tangible asset you can evaluate. Some clients pause between phases to operate with the Phase 1 deliverable for a quarter before committing to deployment.
Most do continue into Phase 2 within 30 to 60 days because the asset is most valuable once it's deployed into the team's daily workflow. The split exists so you can evaluate, not because the two phases are independent.
What does Phase 1 cost?
Phase 1 starts at $15,000 CAD as a fixed-fee engagement. Your final quote depends on team size, core-process complexity, and existing documentation maturity.
Anything outside the defined scope, additional processes beyond the 8 to 12 core, Phase 2 deployment, custom tooling integrations, is quoted separately. Out-of-scope work is honest pricing, not nickel-and-diming. We name the scope upfront and stick to it.
Two entry points to a specific quote: a free 30-minute discovery call that ends with a specific number within 48 hours, or the $497 CAD ControlShift Insights Assessment as a deeper self-serve diagnostic.
What's the difference between Phase 1 and a standalone Business Process Assessment?
A Business Process Assessment is a standalone 2 to 3 week diagnostic, Stage 1 (Insights) of ControlShift, done as its own engagement. Useful when you want a structured read on operations without committing to the full codification work.
Phase 1 is the full 16-week codification engagement that includes the Insights stage but goes through Design, Capture, and Codify to produce a working Playbook. Many clients start with an Assessment to scope Phase 1; some go straight into Phase 1 from a discovery call.
Ready to scope a Phase 1?
A 30-minute discovery call to talk through which of your processes belong in scope. No obligation regardless of whether you engage further.