Emergent Skills · Know before you commit
Find what your business case missed before you commit the money.
Emergent Skills builds checks for the documents behind business decisions. Every problem we report comes with its proof: the exact passages from your files and the arithmetic redone by code.
Start with a free document check. When the decision is big and hard to undo, run a Decision Review.
Why this matters now
Business cases are easier to write than ever. They're no easier to check.
A budget, a board paper or a vendor proposal can be drafted in minutes. Checking it still takes time nobody has: re-adding the columns, comparing the figures across files, and asking which assumptions the whole case rests on.
So most cases get approved on trust. The numbers add up on the page while a total is wrong, two documents disagree, or the savings depend on work nobody has assigned.
You don't have to take our word for it. We show you what supports each finding, and what doesn't.
How it's usually checked
Each usual check leaves a gap
Your own team
They know the business best.
But the people who built the case share its assumptions, and checking it competes with their day jobs.
Outside advisers
They bring independence and depth.
But an engagement takes weeks and a budget of its own, more than many decisions can justify.
A general AI chat
It's fast and often sharp on framing.
But it can't show its quotes are real or that it re-added the numbers. In our testing, two chat tools missed a wrong budget total in 4 of 10 runs.
What we offer
Checks you can verify, from one document to one big decision
All of them run from one upload: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV or text.
Document check
Totals that don't add up, figures that disagree across files, the wrong unit or period, benefits counted twice, and claims another document contradicts. Each with the passages that prove it.
Check my documents → Find and fixWriter's mode
The same check plus a ready-to-paste fix for each error. Code confirms the text to replace is in your document and that a corrected figure matches its recalculation. Re-check the new version for free.
Fix my documents → Automatic for Excel and CSVSpreadsheet checks
Code reads every cell: SUMs that leave out rows, totals that don't match, formulas that break their pattern, numbers typed over formulas, and error cells.
Check a spreadsheet → Know before you commit
Decision Review
A recommendation on one business commitment in about a minute: one of five findings, the figures recomputed by code, and how far each key figure can move before the answer flips. An audited in-depth review follows a few minutes later.
See Decision Review →What makes it different
Proof, not just an opinion
- Quotes that are really there
- Every finding quotes your files, and code confirms each quote exists before you see it. If code can't confirm a problem, we leave it out.
- Arithmetic redone by code
- Totals are re-added and percentages recalculated. Each input is marked as taken from your documents or as an assumption.
- What would change the answer
- For a decision, code works out how far each key figure can move before the recommendation flips.
- A record of what happened
- Decision Review asks what you decided at 30 and 90 days, and later reviews for your company learn from it.
- No stake in the answer
- ES doesn't prepare your business case or sell the solution being proposed. The only aim is a decision you can defend.
In our own testing, on a fictional 7-document board pack with 8 planted errors, the document check found all 8 every time we ran it, each with proof. On the corrected version of the pack, it reported no errors. Decision Review is a new ES method under evaluation: it gives a recommendation, and you keep the decision.
About the founder
Jim Wilde
Founder & Chief Architect, Emergent Skills
Enterprise systems background. Jim has spent decades building and supporting systems where reliability, scale and consequence matter, including nine years as lead consultant at the MTA on mta.info and the NYC subway countdown clocks. On a snowy day, the countdown clocks had to be right for 5 to 7 million people in a hurry.
Why ES checks the evidence. That work taught him to trust what can be verified. A completed project can still leave necessary work unassigned, and a business case can add up while depending on an assumption nobody tested. ES tools are built the same way: show the evidence, mark what is assumed, and say what to do next.
When the work has already stalled
Stalled Priority Snapshot
For a project that has stalled, a result that didn't follow, or a problem that keeps coming back, Jim leads a focused investigation into why. It tests the competing explanations against what actually happened in the work, and you get findings, supported costs and a recommended next step in writing within 24 hours of the session. $1,500.
Find out what's wrongKnow before you commit
What are you about to commit to?
Add the budget, proposal or spreadsheet behind it and see every error with its proof in about a minute. Your first 3 checks are free.