The Operating Charter is the document every partner agency signs to when we start working together. It is six articles long. It is operational, not aspirational. We rewrite it every 12 to 18 months as we learn things, and revision 4 went live this week.
The largest change is in Article V, which covers our quality-versus-speed defaults. The old language said we would 'slip a date by 24 hours rather than ship something you have to walk back.' The new language extends that window to 48 hours and makes the slip non-negotiable. Meaning: if a deliverable fails our two-pass internal review, the account lead has the authority to push the date by up to 48 hours without needing to re-negotiate the timeline with the partner agency. We will tell you the day we see it, not the day before delivery, but the decision to slip is ours to make.
We made this change because the old 24-hour window was producing a specific failure pattern. The senior reviewer would catch an issue late in the day on Thursday, the buyer would scramble to fix it overnight, and the work would ship on Friday morning at lower quality than if we had taken Monday. The buyer is exhausted, the senior is unhappy with the work, and the client gets a deliverable that is technically on time and meaningfully worse. Forty-eight hours gives us room to do the work right.
The smaller change is in Article III, which covers operational confidentiality. We added explicit language about social-media discretion: no Grovant staff or contractor will publicly post about client work, client identifiers, or client metrics on any social platform without written partner consent. This was always the implicit standard. After two industry incidents in 2025 where vendor-side staff posted partner-client metrics on LinkedIn, we decided implicit was not enough. The language is now explicit and enforceable.
Three other articles got minor wording cleanups. Article I (invisibility default) added a line about case studies. Article IV (senior owners only) added a clearer escalation path when a specialist needs to be replaced. Article VI (years not projects) is unchanged.
The full revision 4 Charter is published on the about page. Existing partner agreements continue to operate under the revision number they signed against; revision 4 applies to new engagements from March 18 forward. If an existing partner wants to opt into the revised Charter, we move them with one signature and zero cost.