Illustrative example, Fictional data, Not a client result
Two headcount requests, reviewed before the board
How a founder-CEO might test two hiring requests against the actual work before deciding, and what the board would see afterwards. The company and every figure are invented.
Read a real engagement note: Canine Concepts ↓
- Before
- Each lead argues from workload. Nobody has measured the work, tried AI on it, or agreed what the board should see.
- After
- Each request is tested against the real tasks. The CEO approves one hire, runs a six-week trial instead of the other, and takes baselines to the board.
Inspect the sample
01 Input
The founder-CEO of Larkfield Software, a fictional 60-person company, has two requests for new hires: a support specialist and a sales operations analyst. The board meets in five weeks.
How it moves
- List the recurring work Each lead lists the tasks behind the request, how often they happen and how long they take today.
- Try AI on the real tasks For two weeks the team uses approved tools on the drafting and sorting parts, with a person checking every output.
- Apply the headcount rule Work that needs judgment or relationships points to a hire. Work AI drafted well, with quick checks, points to a trial first.
- Set the board baselines Record cycle time, cost per unit of work, quality and incidents before anything changes.
02 Output
| Task | Weekly volume | AI trial result | The rule says | CEO decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support: how-to tickets | About 180 tickets | Usable drafts on 7 of 10 sampled; a check takes a minute | Trial before hiring | Six-week trial with a weekly quality check |
| Support: billing disputes | About 25 cases | Drafts missed context on most cases | Needs a person | Stays with the current team |
| Sales ops: CRM clean-up | About 400 records | Duplicates flagged reliably; merges need review | Trial before hiring | Trial, with merges reviewed by the RevOps lead |
| Sales ops: deal pricing analysis | 4 deals | Useful first drafts; judgment calls often wrong | Needs a person | Analyst hire approved |
| Monthly board pack | Once a month | First draft built from source data | AI drafts, CEO checks | Baselines recorded this month |
03 Review
Where a person decides
The CEO makes each hiring decision. Team leads confirm the task lists and trial results, and every AI draft in the trial is checked by the person who owns that work.
Limits of this example
Fictional company and figures. A real review depends on your tasks, data and tools, and a short trial is a signal, not proof. Not HR or legal advice; employment decisions follow your own advisers.
Real engagement · Delivered by Utlyze
Canine Concepts: put ad costs beside real sales.
The decision was whether to keep the advertising budget where it was or move it. Before making that call, the business needed a clearer connection between ad activity and actual customers.
Utlyze compared advertising costs with the business’s deposit and sales records. The review exposed gaps in attribution and separated observed activity from estimates of which sales began with an ad.
The useful output was a clearer decision basis: what the records supported, what they could not answer, and what to measure next. This note describes the review method; it does not establish a financial outcome.
See whether this fits your work, and what it would take.