Six capability groups. One method.
We organize around capabilities rather than services, because the solution follows the problem and not the other way round. A services list tells you what a firm sells before it knows what's wrong, whereas a capability describes what the firm can actually do once the diagnosis is in. A single problem might draw on one group below, or on four of them at once.
Strategy and Decision Support
These are the decisions that are too consequential to make on instinct and too messy to hand to a framework. What you get is a defensible basis for the call: the reasoning, the economics, and a record of how the conclusion was actually reached.
Example problem: "We have three ways to grow and no defensible basis for choosing between them."
- Problem diagnosis and constraint identification
- Option development and evaluation
- Operating model and organizational design
- Economics and feasibility modeling
- Risk and downside assessment
- Stakeholder and incentive mapping
- Decision frameworks and governance
- Board and stakeholder materials
- US market entry for international companies
- Fractional and interim executive capacity
Research and Intelligence
We work information environments where the sources disagree, lag, or use formats that don't line up. What comes out is a single traceable answer that names the disagreement rather than hiding it.
Example problem: "Every source we have on this market says something different and we can't tell which one to believe."
- Market and competitive intelligence
- Regulatory and policy research
- Deep multi-source research and reconciliation
- Opportunity and target screening
- Commercial due diligence for smaller transactions
- Decision-maker and counterparty identification
- Source provenance and citation discipline
Operations and Systems
We rebuild how work moves through a business once the current design has stopped supporting the volume. We start from how the work actually happens, exceptions and all, rather than how the org chart says it happens.
Example problem: "Everything still routes through me and I can't take two weeks off."
- Operational diagnosis and bottleneck analysis
- Process design and redesign
- Owner-dependency reduction and delegation design
- Documented procedures and operating cadence
- Workflow automation where it earns its place
- Data integration and a single operating picture
- Vendor and software stack rationalization
- Performance measurement and reporting
Technology and Product
We design and build software when no existing product fits the constraint, and we tell you when one does. Regulatory, security, and data-handling boundaries go into the architecture rather than getting bolted on as policy afterwards. Eleven 186 has shipped 8+ first-of-their-kind systems, with viable builds typically live within 120 days.
Example problem: "We've evaluated four tools and all of them break on the one requirement we can't waive."
- Build versus buy assessment
- System and data architecture
- Custom software and platform development
- Data pipelines, normalization, and provenance
- Compliance-constrained architecture
- Product definition and scoping
- Technical due diligence on existing systems
- Integration across systems that were never meant to connect
Growth and Market Development
We build the path from a product that works to a buyer who pays for it, in markets where the standard playbook doesn't apply. The work follows how the market actually finds and evaluates vendors, not how a channel is supposed to perform.
Example problem: "We built something good and the people who need it can't find it."
- Market entry strategy and sequencing
- Opportunity assessment
- Positioning and category definition
- Buyer and channel identification
- Discovery, qualification, and conversion systems
- Partner and distribution development
- Institutional and government market navigation
- Commercial infrastructure and pipeline design
- Corporate pilot and proof-of-concept strategy
Special Situations
In banking, "special situations" means distressed M&A and restructuring. We use the term in its plain sense, because we're often most useful when the assignment doesn't fit neatly into a category: an unusual constraint, an unfamiliar counterparty, a compressed timeline, or a problem that spans strategy, technology, capital, and regulation all at once.
Example problem: "This doesn't fit any category, and everyone we've asked has told us it isn't their area."
- Cross-disciplinary problems that no single function owns
- Capital-intensive project evaluation
- Regulated and security-constrained environments
- First-of-its-kind builds with no comparable precedent
- Transaction and diligence support
- Procurement and institutional buying processes
- Distressed or time-compressed operational situations
- Assignments where the client cannot yet state the question
One method across six groups
Whichever group applies, the work moves through the same four stages. Diagnose establishes what's actually happening and names the constraint. Advise develops the options and recommends a course of action, with the alternatives and the reasoning made explicit. Build creates what's missing, whether that's a documented process, a data pipeline, or a piece of software. And Execute runs the implementation, including the parts nobody else wants to own.
You can come in at any stage. Most clients start at Diagnose, because most don't yet know which stage they need. These four aren't a sales funnel: each one is a distinct deliverable, useful on its own, and available separately.
Defined deliverables
Some clients already know exactly what they need: a specific deliverable, scoped and priced, with no diagnosis required. We keep a set of defined deliverables at a fixed scope and a fixed price for that buyer. They sit underneath the capability groups above and they don't define the firm. If you're not sure which one you need, don't buy one yet.
Tell us the problem
Tell us what's going on and we'll tell you which of these it touches, and whether it touches more than one.