A defined task, or no call at all
When we contact you there is a requirement, a client who has agreed to the approach, a scope and a date. We do not ring round to ask about availability.
CAPABILITY PARTNERS
We call you when the work is real, with the task already defined.
If you are a specialist firm, you are used to being added to panels and lists you never hear from again. This is the opposite arrangement. You are not listed anywhere. You are recorded, with what we checked and the date we checked it, and you hear from us when a requirement needs exactly what you do.
Four things, and a listing is not one of them
An honest answer within five working days
Including the answer that your expertise does not match the work we see, which is the more common one and is not a judgement of your work.
Your name travels only when you say so
We describe what a specialist can do while we look for the fit. Naming you to a client is a separate permission, asked for at the moment it is needed.
A record that says what we checked
Not what you told us. What we verified, who verified it and on what date, which is what we are prepared to repeat to a client.
What this is not
- Not a directory
- There is no list of capability partners anywhere on this site, and there will not be one. A list is a thing you can be on without anybody ever reading it.
- Not something you can buy
- Nobody pays to be registered and nobody pays for a better position. There is no position.
- Not a recommendation
- Being recorded is not being recommended. We say what we checked and no more, because what we are willing to repeat to a client is the only thing worth anything to you.
- Not permanent
- A verification is valid for twelve months and then it is checked again. An old check is not a check, and a stale record would eventually put you in front of a client on the strength of something that stopped being true.
- Not a volume arrangement
- We will not send you work to keep a relationship warm. If there is nothing that fits, you hear nothing, and that is the arrangement working.
- Not a way around your own conflicts
- Tell us your conflicts and we will work around them. A conflict discovered after an introduction costs you the client and costs us the requirement.
HOW IT WORKS
What you say, and what we check
What you write about yourself is true the moment you write it: this is what we do, here is where we can do it, here is what shows we have done it before. That is an offer, and it is recorded as one.
A capability is a different thing. It is what lets us put your name in front of a client, so it is created by one of us, after checking the evidence you offered, and it carries that person's name and the date. We may ask to speak to somebody you worked for. What we can check is what we can say about you, and nothing beyond that is said.
Twelve months later the check expires and we come back to you. That is not administrative tidiness: a specialist's team changes, a jurisdiction changes, a certification lapses, and the record would otherwise go on asserting something that stopped being true.
If a requirement then needs what you do, we come to you with the task defined, and you decide. You are never named to the client before you have agreed to it for that specific task.
One paragraph is enough to start
What you do, where you can do it, and what shows you have done it. You will have a written answer within five working days, either way.