OUR METHODS

A useful diagnosis begins with a precisely defined gap.

We conduct the diagnosis with the leadership team. Together, we define the business result, make competing explanations explicit, test them against evidence and convert the diagnosis into choices the organization can carry through.

ON THIS PAGE

Gap Statements

Define the performance or opportunity gap the leadership team will diagnose.

Root Cause Analysis

Test competing explanations and determine what is producing the gap.

Business outcome

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Performance or opportunity gap

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Hypotheses + evidence

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Root causes

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Organizational choices

We build the diagnosis with the people who will act on it.

The business brings knowledge of its customers, operations and commitments. We bring a disciplined inquiry that separates observations from interpretations, keeps rival explanations alive and gives the leadership team a common basis for deciding.

Leadership team

Agrees the outcome and gap, judges the evidence, resolves legitimate disagreements and makes the organizational choices.

Focused work teams

Build the fact base, examine patterns, test explanations and surface implications for their parts of the business.

Change Logic

Frames the questions, introduces the tools, challenges assumptions and facilitates the decisions that connect diagnosis with action.

Define the result before diagnosing the organization.

A performance gap is a result below the required level. An opportunity gap is value the business could capture but is not yet capturing. Both require a credible account of current performance, the result leaders need and the time horizon for achieving it.

Performance gap

A result is below the level the strategy or current commitments require.

For example: customer retention, service reliability or margin is below the required level.

Opportunity gap

The business has identified value it could create but is not yet capturing.

For example: revenue from a new customer segment, income from services or the contribution expected from a new business remains below the required level.

A USEFUL GAP STATEMENT

[Current performance] compared with [required performance] by [time horizon], while preserving [critical condition].

Why precision matters

A vague gap produces a broad diagnosis and familiar solutions. A precise gap establishes what must be explained, sets the boundary of the inquiry and gives leaders a common basis for judging evidence. Discipline at this stage prevents the team from solving a different problem from the one the business faces.

Questions that sharpen the gap

Where are we now?

Use evidence that is specific enough for the leadership team to recognize the same starting point.

What result is required?

State the outcome in business terms rather than naming an organizational solution in advance.

By when?

The time horizon affects which causes are material and which interventions are feasible.

What must be preserved?

Safety, service, customer trust or a distinctive capability may constrain how the organization should change.

Treat initial explanations as hypotheses to be tested.

The first explanation is often familiar: structure, skills, culture or leadership. A disciplined diagnosis develops several plausible explanations and states what evidence would support or weaken each one. The purpose is to learn which explanation best accounts for the gap, including evidence that could disprove a preferred view.

Explanation

What might be causing the gap, and through what mechanism?

Evidence for

What would we expect to observe if this explanation were true?

Evidence against

What would cause us to reject or revise the explanation?

Five Whys follows the causal chain.

Begin with an observed condition connected to the gap. Ask why it exists, then ask why of each answer. Each response should move from an observed condition toward a causal mechanism that can be examined, rather than a judgment about a person or a label such as culture or communication.

ONE POSSIBLE CAUSAL CHAIN

WHY 1

Name the immediate condition producing the result.

WHY 2

Ask what process or decision produces that condition.

WHY 3

Examine the organizational arrangement behind it.

WHY 4

Look at the relationships that sustain the arrangement.

WHY 5

State the mechanism the team is prepared to test.

The fifth answer is not automatically the root cause. The team tests the chain against evidence, looks for rival explanations and revises it when the evidence does not hold.

How we keep the diagnosis disciplined

Stay with observable evidence.

Separate what people have observed from the meaning they have assigned to it.

Keep rival explanations alive.

Ask what else could produce the same pattern and what evidence would distinguish the explanations.

Examine relationships across the system.

Look at how tasks, people, formal organization and culture reinforce one another.

Describe mechanisms rather than blame.

A useful diagnosis distinguishes causes leaders can influence from conditions the organization must accommodate.

Examine the organization as a system.

The Congruence Model helps leaders examine the critical tasks the strategy requires, the people who perform them, the formal organization and the culture. The diagnosis considers the relationships among all four, including the leader’s own contribution. The relationships among the elements show how the organization may be producing the gap.

Read about the Congruence Model

Critical tasks

People

Culture

Formal organization

Examine the relationships among the elements.

A disciplined diagnosis gives the leadership team a shared basis for action.

A precise statement of the business outcome and performance gap.

A small set of tested causal explanations, with evidence for and against each.

Clarity about what must change and what must be preserved.

A coherent set of organizational choices and clear ownership for the work ahead.