Frontier Audit · Meeting 2 prep

Wild Hive — Meeting 2 Agenda

Attendees: Allison Beadle, Kim Bedwell (Wild Hive) · John Nugent, Lauren O'Brien (Newfangled) | Duration: 60 minutes | Focus: Strategic direction

1. The strategic planning vortex

20 minutes
Notes for me Allison's own words from the intake. Anchor on the 50-hour proposal. Listen for individual / relational / structural — that's the diagnostic. Let 18-month direction surface only if the vortex turns out to be the price of bespoke work.
"Previously it was the review process, but that has improved. Now, it's more on the front end of proposal development and getting some senior leaders to pull themselves out of the strategic planning vortex and focus on the executional elements. We've lost days, if not weeks, moving from setting the strategic direction to being able to develop a fully integrated program." Allison · intake form, proposal_bottleneck field

Open by framing: Meeting 1 was the operational view; today is the leadership view. Read the quote back. Then start where Allison started.

  • Walk me through what the vortex feels like when you're inside it. Whose desk does it sit on?
  • Where in the proposal does it grip — strategic framework, costing, timeline, the bridge to executional detail?
  • The 50-hour example — which client, what specifically broke down, what would have caught it earlier?
  • When you do break out of it, what's the move that works?
  • If it lands: Is this vortex something you'd want less of at scale, or is it the price of doing strategic-upstream work for clients who don't send briefs?

2. Where you have least confidence you know the truth

25 minutes
Notes for me Highest-value section, most fragile to land. Frame as permission-giving — Kim's own "we get it done well, but the process is not always beautiful" is the air you want. Let them name blind spots first. The Potatoes scorecard anecdote is a backup probe if they don't surface a truth-gap on their own.

Transition deliberately: "We've talked to your team, read your intake, watched a meeting. We're going to ask a question that's intentionally uncomfortable, because the answer is the most valuable thing you can give us today."

Core question: Where do you have least confidence that what you think is happening at Wild Hive is actually happening?

Areas worth probing only if they don't surface on their own:

  • The contractor model — are the Tier 1 / 2 / 3 lines as clean as Kary described, and is the value-vs-cost calculus what you assume?
  • What the team isn't telling you when work is stuck or sloppy.
  • Client communication you don't see — DMs, side calls, scope creep that doesn't make it to a status doc.
  • Scope-as-source-of-truth vs. what activity reports actually show.
  • AI usage you don't know about. There's a difference between trying and deploying.
Backup probe if the conversation needs an anchor Kim's Potatoes scorecard decision from Meeting 1 — pivoting budget into a webinar (2,500 attendees, $15K) over a culinary immersion ($75K, ~10 people) because she knew Potatoes leadership "will only see this for our entire nutrition program." That decision is smart. The question is whether activity reports across the rest of the book are similarly engineered for the audience reading them, and whether that gap is one you're confident you have visibility into.
If AI opens up: "What would you need to see to feel like you knew?"

3. What success looks like for this engagement

15 minutes
Notes for me Do not preview Meeting 1 findings. Two threads here: the unit of success (hours, revenue, calm, capacity, a specific build, a decision), and the operating-model question — whether bespoke-without-structure is what they want to keep. The team's "it depends" pattern means they may need a nudge to take a position. John's Meeting 1 framing ("a menu of what's possible") is the expectation they walk in with.
  • When you sit at your desk in three months and look back at this engagement, what makes it feel successful?
  • What's the unit of success — hours saved, revenue gained, leadership calm, fewer client surprises, a specific thing built, a decision made?
  • What's the headline you'd want to be able to say about this work, internally?
  • Whose judgment counts at the regroup — yours, the team's, the clients'?

The operating-model question

Wild Hive has named two facts about how they operate: Workamajig PM is "not used really at all" (Kim), and three sample activity reports look completely different. The team's running answer has been "it depends." At the leadership level, this needs a position:

  • Is this working for you — where is it serving you, and where is it costing you?
  • Do you want it to change in 18 months — more structure, more consistency, more rails?
  • What would standardizing do to help or hurt efficiency? And what would it do to the culture that depends on flexibility?
Close Confirm Meeting 3 timing. Soft heads-up that we'll want Kim ready to ground-truth operational hours numbers at Meeting 3 — committee decks, MuckRack weekly time. Note the Potatoes message-scoring system may end up client-owned per Kim's later comment.