More demand than capacity
Every commitment consumes attention, time, and resources that cannot be spent twice.
Priorities everyone gets behind.
Advisors and an AI-powered platform to connect your strategy, priorities and plans, and keep them connected when things change.
Execution is accelerating. Organizational decision capacity is not.
Naming the top five is not the hard part. The hard part is that they compete for the same finite capacity, depend on one another to land, and rest on evidence that keeps moving.
Interdependent work
Priorities originate across functions, then compete, depend on one another, and move through the same constrained system.
Changing conditions
Plans have to move. The challenge is changing them without creating contradictory commitments or fragmented execution.
We work with organizations where decisions travel across functions and over time.
Our work is most useful when all four of these are true.
| What is true | What people say | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Priorities are revisited throughout the year, across several teams. | “We re-plan every quarter, and every department has a stake in it.” |
| 2nd | The people doing the work are not the people setting direction. | “Leadership sets the direction. Forty teams carry it out.” |
| 3rd | Changing course happens often, and each change is costly. | “Every shift costs us weeks of rework.” |
| 4th | Leadership values alignment over keeping every option open. | “I would rather we all move in one direction.” |
Advisory
Consulting
Work directly with your leadership team on the prioritization system, a consequential portfolio, or a decision that will travel across the organization.
Explore consulting →Working sessionWorkshops
Bring the people, the work, and a live decision. Leave with a shared frame, explicit tradeoffs, and commitments the organization can carry forward.
Explore workshops →Ongoing practiceCoaching and fractional leadership
Build the judgment, routines, and governance needed to keep priorities, plans, and execution connected over time.
See ways to work together →Good prioritization creates commitments for action and alignment through change.
Commitment provides enough clarity and conviction to move. Coherence keeps the organization coordinated as priorities, plans, and commitments evolve.
01 Intent
What the organization is trying to accomplish
02 Priorities
What deserves attention and resources now
03 Plans
How the priorities will be advanced
04 Commitment
The owned decision that creates action and preserves alignment as it changes
04A Creates action
Commitment · v1 The organization makes a clear, owned choice.
Attention, resources, and work can move with confidence.
04B Preserves alignment through change
- Changed conditionNew evidence changes a belief
- Revisit priority and planThe accountable owner decides
- Commitment · v2The reason and prior version stay on record
05 Execution
Work carried out against the current commitment
Aligned to commitment v1 Realigned to commitment v2
In their words
What clients say about working with us.
Harry brought clarity to an emotionally complex decision, turning vague aspirations into a concrete framework with measurable milestones.
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Harry is a game-changing coach and consultant. He’s that guy who knows the one thing you need to hear and can make small tweaks that get you order-of-magnitude shifts. He’s also warm, funny, caring, and a great deal of fun to be around.
Dave GrayAuthor and Consultant -
Harry is honest, laser-focused on outcomes, and has an uncanny ability to pinpoint problem areas. I have saved countless hours in lost effort and frustration as a direct result of his counsel.
Anu GardinerTechnology Executive -
I’ve worked with Harry in different capacities… he is masterful at deconstructing complex issues so that solutions become apparent.
Asim RazzaqStartup CEO -
Harry is an exceptional product thinker and leader with boundless energy. He inspires loyalty and commitment, drives change, and keeps teams aligned with long-term goals.
Scott SehlhorstProduct Management Strategist -
Harry is truly one of a kind — a master product strategist, designer, and innovator who inspires people to become better leaders and transforms organizations to achieve greatness.
Wendy ShepperdTechnology Executive -
Harry is one in a million. His ability to creatively think beyond the obvious to solve problems and mentor teams to “get it done” is world-class.
Tom GalloExecutive and CRO -
Harry’s clarity of sensing and empathy helps him uncover the real problems you face, leading to concrete habit changes and long-lasting positive impacts.
Mark FinnernInnovation Catalyst -
Working with Harry was WOW! He’s an exceptional leader with integrity, trustworthiness, and technical competence; his actions positively impact any organization.
Shawn DecuirTechnical Program Manager
Organizations we’ve worked with
A practical discipline for consequential choices.
Our work builds on Harry Max’s Managing Priorities and decades of helping leaders make difficult choices with greater clarity, rigor, and follow-through.
What a client noticed
Lists travel well. Context does not.
Someone was not in the room. Something was lost in the retelling. A commitment moved through three layers, and nobody downstream knew what else it touched. The list made it across the organization. What made the list did not.
01What people think the list is
02What the list really is
03What Priorities.ai does
01What people think the list is
02What the list really is
03What Priorities.ai does
The context around that list is almost as important as the list, for people to buy into the list.
Many ways to prioritize. One record.
Org charts distribute authority and expertise. They do not, by themselves, make decisions hold together across the lines they draw.
Scroll sideways to see the whole drawing.
We believe an organization needs one shared way of describing the work it is weighing and the work it has promised: the items, how they rank, how they relate, who decided, why, and what was committed. An item is an item in every part of the company. A rank is a rank. A commitment is a commitment. The words mean the same thing everywhere, and a decision about one carries its consequences to everything it touches.
That shared foundation is what makes freedom possible. Functions, business lines, and teams can plan and prioritize their own way, with their own methods, and still read one another's priorities, dependencies, and commitments. Autonomy works when a team can see the obligations that connect its work to the rest and honor them, and when a commitment can change without its reasons disappearing.
Priorities.ai
Priorities.ai: a shared record of what you decided.
Every engagement runs on Priorities.ai, a shared record of what your organization decided: what it committed to, which commitments conflict, who may change them and why, and whether the work in progress still matches.
| Job | How it works | Without it |
|---|---|---|
| Records commitments | Direction and requests become a short, ranked list of commitments. | Every request competes as a priority. |
| Surfaces conflicts | Commitments that need the same people, budget or time are flagged before work starts, for the accountable people to resolve. | Conflicts appear partway through delivery. |
| Controls changes | Each commitment names who may change it. Changes go through that person and are recorded. | Plans change without a record of who changed them, or why. |
| Keeps the reasons | The criteria and evidence behind each decision stay attached. Earlier versions remain on file. | Settled questions are reopened because the reasoning is lost. |
| Checks the work | Work in progress is compared with what was decided. | Differences surface only after delivery. |
How it comes to you
01
We deploy it
Configured to how your organization actually decides: your cycles, your criteria, who holds authority where — connected to the systems your teams already work in.
02
We run it with you
Your first cross-functional decisions go through it, facilitated with your leaders and teams, until the method belongs to the people using it rather than to us.
03
You own it
Licensed to you and operated by your team, with the record of every decision made along the way. We stay involved at whatever depth you want — including none.
The AI in Priorities.ai
More than thirty agents and assists work the record. You make the decisions.
They shape what arrives, red-team the ranking before you publish, and watch the plan after you do: execution drift, rules bypassed, the outside world touching what you committed to.
Shapes the record
Classifies, de-duplicates, and structures what arrives, from notes, dictation, or a spreadsheet.
Red-teams the ranking
Knife-edge margins, buried dissent, priorities that serve no objective, the one item that unblocks everything.
Watches the plan
Execution drift, rules bypassed, the outside world touching your plan, and every review date the record set for itself.