Michael
A strategy partner that gives positions, not answers.
Many AI tools give you a plausible paragraph. Michael aims to give you a strategic position — the question reframed, the relevant frameworks named, assumptions tagged, trade-offs made explicit, a specific recommendation, and the evidence that would have to hold for the call to stand up.
Patent-pending. Built by FIRMSconsulting LLC for our own work, then made available to a small set of operators. Module 1 is live.
Do what you do best. Let us do what we do best. We are the planning capability for executives, firms, and companies that need a better one — or that need one at all.
Consequential decisions are made every day at every level, and almost none of them are made with the planning capability the stakes warrant. We provide that capability — to the executive thinking through a major call, to the advisory firm sharpening its work for a client, and to the company that needs a planning function it has not been able to build well. You stay focused on the decisions only you can make. We run the depth beneath you.
What Michael produces
For a given strategy question, Michael returns a structured position rather than a paragraph:
- The reframe. Your question, restated to expose the decision underneath it.
- The frameworks. Named, not implied. Whichever the problem calls for.
- The assumptions. Tagged so you can see what is load-bearing and what is incidental. Change one, and Michael recomputes downstream.
- The trade-offs. Made explicit, with the points of false certainty called out.
- The recommendation. Specific and defensible.
- The evidence required. What would have to be true — and what would falsify the call.
- The chain of decision. The reasoning is captured so you can walk it, override any link, and see the position recompute.
A strategy partner spends a career building this apparatus in their head. Michael builds a version of it in seconds, and shows the wiring.
How Michael is different
| General AI assistants | Michael | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Whatever you can describe in a prompt. | Focused on one workflow: how to increase the value of a business. Light on general-purpose tasks. |
| Personalization | Same model for everyone. | Shaped around the user’s profile — industry, role, portfolio, operating context. |
| Output | Conversational text. | A structured strategic position — reframe, frameworks, assumptions, trade-offs, recommendation, evidence required. |
| Reasoning | Mostly hidden inside the model. | Surfaced and auditable. Each link in the chain of decision is visible, and you can override any of them. |
| Accountability | Plausibility. | Falsifiability. Michael tells you what evidence would change its position. |
| Privacy | Varies. Inputs may be used for training. | Architectural. We don’t train on your inputs. |
Who uses Michael
Michael is built for operators who move the value of a business — from three different seats.
Run more of your business through Michael.
Michael can support the analyses, the report, the proposal, the implementation, and the marketing copy — one chain of decision instead of a stack of disconnected apps and contractors.
Find targeted ways to increase the value of a business.
Run a portfolio company through Michael and surface the specific moves — operating model, capital allocation, divestiture, acquisition — that compound value, with reasoning shown and evidence required.
A problem-solving system for any problem you want to take on.
No need to ask for a budget for analyses or wait for a consulting team. Walk into the next meeting with a fully written-up idea, structured and defensible enough to take to management.
The privacy promise
We don’t train on your inputs.
Your strategic conversations are not used to train Michael, are not used to train any third-party model, and are not retained beyond the session unless you explicitly save them to your account.
This is built into the architecture rather than living as a toggle in account settings.
If you are a strategy team working on a sensitive question — an acquisition you have not announced, a divestiture you are pressure-testing, a board memo you have not yet shown the board — you can use Michael without the cost of disclosure.
Who is FIRMSconsulting
We are not an advisory or consulting firm.
Clients come to us with a problem. We take over and manage the asset for the client to fix the problem. We deploy AI and digital best practice to take ownership of assets and risks that are non-core to a client — a drain on management’s time, a distraction — but critical to the business. In effect, we free up our clients’ capital and attention so they can focus on what only they can do.
We document our work through podcasts, video training programs, and structured-position write-ups. That documentation has become a library of more than 6,500 episodes on StrategyTraining.com covering case interviews, strategy formulation, value creation, transformation, and operating-model design. Founder Kris Safarova has authored more than 30 books on business strategy — several adopted as university textbooks, several bestsellers.
Kris continues to mentor a small group of senior business leaders, so the firm stays close to what actually breaks at the top of an enterprise — what an operating-model decision feels like the week the board pushes back, what a divestiture looks like when the CFO needs cover, where strategy plans rupture during execution. Michael is fed by that practice; the practice is sharpened by Michael.
Try Michael
Module 1 is available for early access at workwithmichael.ai.
If you run strategy at the operating level — corporate development, strategy office, founder, investor, portfolio operator — Michael is built for the way you work.