The investigation
The same four phases, every single time.
12–16 weeks. The four phases are the same in every engagement, which is what lets us say how your business compares with the others we have examined.
01 / What we agree first
Three conditions, before the first session.
Blame is off the table
We are asking what the system was missing, not who is at fault. Findings are written about the system and carry no individual name.
No restructuring during phase one
Announcements, moves and tidying up all change the evidence we are reading. They wait about two weeks.
A sponsor who can act
One executive with the authority to do something about what we find. Without that, the finding lands somewhere it cannot be used.
The moment a business knows what you are looking for, it starts managing what you see.
02 / The four phases
What happens, and in what order.
Preserve the scene
We collect what is already in your business before anything moves: board packs, minutes, exit interviews, old survey data, the org chart and the one people actually use.
We also note the ordinary things: which meetings get cancelled, how fast people reply, and who gets called before a decision reaches a room.
Listen properly
One-to-one sessions across your leadership team and the layer below it. Nothing is attributed to anyone. The same question set in every session, so the answers can be compared.
We treat nothing as fact until something independent backs it up: a second person saying the same thing, a document, or a number.
Trace the cause
A dated timeline of decisions and changes. We follow each symptom back four levels and separate the immediate trigger from the conditions that were already sitting there.
A failure like this usually rests on 7 to 12 small factors. A chain that stops at one has stopped early.
Score the defences
Strategy, communication, trust, accountability and escalation, each scored from what we found. One weak defence is survivable and most businesses have one.
The finding is the path where all five have a gap at the same point, because that is the path with nothing left to stop it.
Want to know whether this applies to you? Start with 90 minutes.
Book a call No fee · Written outcome03 / What the transcript shows
Five things we listen for.
- “We decided” turns into “it was decided”, and we can date when.
- Four different people walk up to the same subject and walk away from it.
- A decision recorded as unanimous gets described three different ways.
- One bad experience years ago is still the reason people stay quiet now.
- A challenge to a senior view gets raised twice and then dropped rather than settled.
Every one of these is about the system rather than the person. The same transcript from a different business produces a different set.
04 / What you get
Four documents, and one you keep using.
Preliminary report
A written position on three things: whether this looks like an alignment problem, what an investigation would examine, and what it would cost. Where we conclude that an investigation is not warranted, the report says so in the first paragraph and there is nothing further to pay or decide.
Findings report
Numbered findings, one to a page, each carrying the pattern, the evidence and the consequence together. How many people we heard it from is in the sentence.
Alignment register
Every change scored for severity, likelihood and how easily it would be spotted, owned by one named person, with a completion test anyone could verify.
Embedding protocol
A published schedule for withdrawing our support, with the register re-scored at each step. Your board keeps the register when we leave.
An investigation with no intervention is an expensive document.
05 / Start here
Find out whether this applies to you.
Four minutes on your own, or 90 minutes with us. Both end with something written down.
The diagnostic reads one person on one day. An investigation reads your whole leadership team, and that is the difference between an indication and a finding.