Lanternfield, the first 90 days.

A note from Chris to Joan, written the week the build started. This is the plan a real client gets: short, in order, and honest about what has to happen before the clever part works.

Joan,

I tell people that are bold enough to finally explore AI in their business that the only way AI works is with documented data. Right now Lanternfield's data lives on a whiteboard in Reading, a group text in Allentown and in Priya's head in Lancaster. A new system built on that is a recipe for revolt: your recruiters will stop trusting it the first time it is wrong, and it will be wrong on day one. So here is the order, and why.

Days 1 to 30: the boring part that makes the rest hum

• One list of open orders. Every branch puts every order in the Desk, not the whiteboard. The fill board goes live the day that is true and not a day before.
• One list of associates on assignment. Who is at which site, which shift, since when. The morning brief reads from this. If it is wrong, the brief is wrong.
• The morning brief. Three to six lines, every day at 6:30, each one a question you can answer with a button. We will tune it for two weeks. Tell me the lines you ignore and I will cut them.
• What I need from you: one hour with each branch coordinator, and a rule that the whiteboard comes down on day 15.

Days 31 to 60: scoring, the outbox, and the first read

• Applicant scoring. Overnight applicants scored against open orders. The rule I will not bend: when the system cannot verify something, it leaves the box blank. A blank is honest. A guess costs you a placement and a client.
• The outbox. Week-one check-ins to associates and status notes to clients, drafted every morning, sent only when a recruiter approves. Dana first, then everyone.
• RadRoot, first read. "Why associates leave before day 30," sent to everyone who started in the last six weeks. Nine out of twelve answered in the sandbox version. Expect fewer in real life and expect one answer that changes a job order.
• What I need from you: let the recruiters see the read. The summary is for them, not for a drawer.

Days 61 to 90: rehearsal, the client check-in, and the next build

• RadSim, weekly. Ten minutes a week for the recruiters under two years in. The skeptical HR head and the bill-rate pushback first, because those are the calls Paul told me go badly.
• Quarterly client check-in through RadRoot. Six questions, fixed, to every hiring manager you have placed with this quarter. The one text answer at the end is where the next order comes from.
• Decide the next build from the reads. I will bring you the three things the data says, ranked. You say go to one.

What this costs and what it does not

The Desk is a RadWorks build: a monthly subscription, no setup fee, and the first month's scope is written before you pay. RadRoot and RadSim are each their own subscription and you can switch either off. My time is the part that scales down, not up: by day 90 you should need me for a monthly note and a quarterly build decision, and not for the Tuesday.

Got a day-30 problem? Got a "where do I even get started" problem? Happy to chat.

Chris

Lanternfield is a fictional company. The plan is real in shape: it is how Rad sequences a build for any business with a whiteboard, a group text and twelve people who know things nobody wrote down.