How We Work
Layer Aleph consists entirely of the partners profiled on the home page. We are not a firm that sends senior partners to the sales meeting and junior associates to do the actual work. What you see is what you get.
As a result, our availibility is limited. We schedule our projects first-come, first-serve. We do not reserve dates that a customer “might” want, and our timing is not committed until a contract is signed.
We are transparent about our services and our rates, which are right here on this page. The shape of a particular job can vary somewhat according to the client’s needs. Rates are not negotiated or discounted. Layer Aleph sets its rates at the beginning of the calendar year, and every customer in that year receives the same price. This ensures we are compliant with the “most favored nation” clauses found in many government contracts, and generally works much better for us.
We have worked with startups, multinational Fortune 100 corporations, and US county, state, and federal agencies.
To begin the process, email us at team@layeraleph.com.
Government customers please see here.
Our Offerings
On-Site Team Engagement
The standard Layer Aleph engagement is an intensive two-week sprint. The entire team (4 partners) will travel to your site(s), meet your personnel, attend your meetings, coach your managers, and work hands-on with technical staff as appropriate.
You should have a sense of the problem you are trying to solve, but it is OK if the problem is poorly understood. Much of the value we provide is in making sense of a novel or chaotic situation.
Examples of successful Layer Aleph engagements:
- “We have a claims processing backlog that is months long and we don’t understand why.”
- “Our critical business process has just suffered a devastating public outage and we need to answer for how we will prevent it from happening again.”
- “We are considering acquiring a company or technology and want to evaluate and vet the claims they are making.”
- “We are in year six of our two-year modernization plan and we have to make hard decisions about whether to continue, cancel, or change direction.” (Our most popular menu item!)
- “We are in year four of our three-month plan to reorganize our 10,000 person technical organization and we don’t know why everything is stalled.”
Other than the occasional incidental appointment, you receive the dedicated full-time attention of all four partners for the duration of the engagement. Layer Aleph does not split time among multiple clients.
We are typically accountable to one executive sponsor (such as CEO or CIO), and brief other groups of staff or upper management as the sponsor finds appropriate. Most contracts include a written report as the final deliverable. The length and detail of the report depends on the client’s needs.
2024 price: $480,000 for two weeks, includes all ordinary expenses.
Crisis Engineering Workshop
Layer Aleph applies a unique, interdisciplinary approach to problem solving that is drawn from our decades of experience working on dozens of large complex systems. It is organized around extracting maximum value from crisis moments. “Crisis” means the short windows of opportunity that periodically arise in every organization, where exigent circumstances overtake inertia and rapid change is possible. For the sake of needing a name, we have called our framework crisis engineering.
We like nothing more than to share and teach what has worked for us. We offer a two-day on-site workshop that combines lectures, discussion, and interactive role-play. Two or more of the Layer Aleph partners travel to your location and present to a group of up to 20 attendees that you designate. Attendees receive the slides and certain other collateral.
Learning objectives:
- How to identify a crisis
- Choosing the right people for a response team
- How to establish a “war room” and coordination channel
- Sensemaking and navigating in a crisis
- Mapping a complex system
- When and how to wind down the crisis effort
- How to preserve durable behavior changes post-crisis
There is a free video at innovate.us where we did our best to outline crisis engineering as it is useful for public officials. The workshop covers the same concepts in more depth.
2024 price: $50,000, includes all ordinary expenses
Occasionally Layer Aleph offers an online version of the workshop that is open for anyone to apply. Online sessions are limited to 20 people, and when there are more applicants, we choose a cohort that will serve the learning outcomes. If you are interested, please sign up for the wait list.
2024 price: $2,500 per attendee
Consulting A La Carte
Occasionally, our customers have special events or other needs where it makes sense to hire one of the Layer Aleph partners individually. We offer a general day rate for such situations. This is the way to hire one of us for a conference keynote, internal company workshop, or other speaking event.
Our day rate includes our travel, meaning that we will make our own arrangements to appear where you need us, anywhere in the world. We have learned the hard way not to rely on the customer’s travel reimbursement system.
2024 price: $15,000 per partner per day
Government Customers
We have worked with several states and agencies via teaming agreements. Please contact us to discuss. Also please contact us if you need information on our security clearances. Some other information that government customers require:
NAICS code: 541990 (Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services)
SAM ID: YURDKYHKXLR3 for LAYER ALEPH LLC
DUNS registration: 093212161
US federal government: Most agencies can hire us via NASA SEWP. Consulting and workshop services are listed.
Pennsylvania: Vendor number 558463. Small business certification number 558463-2024-01-SB.
Washington: Layer Aleph LLC is incorporated in the state of Washington, UBI number 604 119 872.
Contact us
See how to hire us. To reach us, email team@layeraleph.com or call +1 912-999-1036. We usually arrange an initial consultation in less than 48 hours.