A company can have capable people, an ambitious plan, and a problem that remains unresolved because understanding it requires time nobody has.
The question crosses departments. The available information points in different directions. A proposed opportunity sounds promising, but the team has not established what pursuing it would actually require.
MuirMed provides focused support for questions that need sustained investigation and clear ownership.
Work directly with Max Muir on the question behind the decision: investigate the evidence, challenge assumptions, develop a recommendation, and carry it into implementation.
Engagements can address software, AI, financial services, healthcare, and emerging business models. Clinical knowledge adds depth where medicine matters; disciplined investigation establishes the context and mechanics of each new subject.
A strategic project with someone accountable for moving it forward
Some assignments need a person who can work across functions, gather the relevant information, and bring the discussion to a decision.
A founder may be considering a new product. A leadership team may be divided over entering a market. An established company may have several explanations for an underperforming service and little agreement about which one to investigate first.
The work begins by defining the decision, its stakes, and the assumptions supporting competing positions.
An engagement can include:
- Defining the question and the decisions it affects.
- Identifying the information already available and the gaps that matter.
- Speaking with customers, employees, partners, or other relevant participants.
- Examining competing explanations.
- Comparing practical options and their implications.
- Presenting a recommendation with its supporting evidence.
- Helping assign next steps and evaluate what happens.
Deliverables include a decision memorandum, an executive presentation, or an implementation plan. The purpose is to give the team a position it can discuss, challenge, and act on.
New products and business lines
Before committing substantial effort to an idea, establish the problem from the perspective of the people expected to use and pay for the solution.
Who experiences the problem most acutely? What do they do today? What makes the current approach inadequate? What would have to change for them to adopt something new?
The assessment also examines what the opportunity demands of the company. An attractive customer need may require capabilities, distribution, support, or financing the business has not yet established.
A defined assignment can examine:
- The customers with the strongest reason to adopt.
- The difference between interest, trial, and sustained use.
- Existing alternatives, including manual processes and doing nothing.
- The people involved in approving a purchase.
- Implementation effort and other costs customers would absorb.
- The capabilities the company would need to deliver consistently.
- The assumptions that connect early interest to the proposed revenue opportunity.
The resulting recommendation should explain which audience to pursue, what needs testing, and what evidence would justify a larger commitment.
An example: a software company considering a new customer segment
Suppose a company has built a useful product for small businesses and wants to sell it to larger organizations.
The investigation asks whether those customers are buying the same thing in practice. Larger customers may have different approval processes, security requirements, integration needs, support expectations, and definitions of success.
The work can include customer interviews, a comparison of competing offerings, examination of the sales process, and discussions with the company’s product and operating teams.
The conclusion might support expansion, identify a narrower segment, or show that the proposed opportunity requires a materially different offering. The next step should follow from what the investigation establishes.
AI, software, and technology decisions
A technology demonstration can make a task look effortless. The organizational decision requires understanding what happens around that task.
AI assessment examines the inputs, outputs, judgment being delegated, consequences of error, and effort required to verify results. Software assessment examines how the product changes the work, which systems and people it depends on, and what adoption displaces.
Potential assignments include:
- Examining whether a proposed tool addresses the team’s actual problem.
- Comparing purchase, development, and process-change options.
- Translating a business need into clear requirements.
- Identifying tasks suitable for a bounded pilot.
- Defining the evidence needed to judge whether the pilot worked.
- Gathering user feedback and investigating unexpected results.
- Helping leadership distinguish a useful capability from an attractive demonstration.
The same practical assessment applies to blockchain and other emerging technologies. The starting questions remain concrete: who needs to coordinate, what must be trusted or verified, and what does the proposed architecture make possible?
Technical implementation and security review are assigned according to the expertise required. MuirMed’s contribution centers on the problem, requirements, practical use, and decision.
Operations and competing incentives
A recurring problem may persist because each participant is responding reasonably to a different set of expectations.
A sales team promises flexibility. Operations needs consistency. A new approval process reduces one risk while slowing decisions elsewhere. A tool saves one department time by transferring work to another.
Operational investigation follows those interactions across the organization.
The work can include mapping how a task moves through the organization, speaking with the people responsible for each part, and identifying where expectations, incentives, or ownership conflict.
Questions worth examining include:
- What is each team trying to accomplish?
- Where does responsibility become unclear?
- Which measures encourage behavior that creates problems elsewhere?
- Where does work accumulate or get repeated?
- What assumptions do leaders and frontline staff hold differently?
- What would a proposed change require from the people implementing it?
Deliverables include a clear account of the problem, options for addressing it, responsibilities for implementation, and measures that reveal whether the change improves the overall process.
Advisory involvement with continuity
Ongoing advisory support combines preparation, participation, and follow-through.
Support can include recurring discussions with a founder or leadership team, investigation of new opportunities, review of an initiative’s progress, or responsibility for a particular strategic project.
Continuity creates the context to understand previous decisions and recognize when new information changes their implications. Familiarity with the organization, its people, and its constraints makes each subsequent discussion more useful.
Possible arrangements include a focused consulting engagement, a retained advisory relationship, or an appropriate contract or part-time role within the team. Responsibilities and decision authority are defined explicitly.
Clinical development and evidence assessment
Healthcare product and service development benefits from direct clinical perspective.
Clinical assessment examines the intended patient, the proposed mechanism, existing alternatives, and the outcomes that matter in practice.
Clinical development support includes formulating meaningful questions, examining evidence, and contributing to appropriately scoped research work.
My research experience is developing; responsibilities are scoped around clinical strengths and matched with the methodological, statistical, regulatory, and operational expertise the project requires.
Initial assignments can include a review of the clinical problem, a structured discussion of meaningful outcomes, or an assessment of the assumptions connecting the proposed product to its expected benefit.
Stay involved after the recommendation
The presentation makes the recommendation explicit: what to do, why the evidence supports it, and what could change that view.
If we continue together, the next stage is implementation: agreeing on responsibilities, identifying what needs to be learned, observing results, and adjusting the approach when necessary.
Your team receives deliverables matched to the assignment:
- A defined decision and an investigation plan.
- Customer, employee, or partner findings.
- An assessment of alternatives and tradeoffs.
- A recommendation with explicit assumptions.
- A pilot or implementation plan.
- A review of results and proposed next steps.
Give the next decision clear ownership.
It may be an opportunity you have not had time to investigate, an initiative that needs sustained attention, or a question that keeps returning without a satisfactory answer.
Describe the situation, the decision ahead, and the involvement your team needs. The initial conversation establishes fit, scope, and next steps.