Diagnosis before solution

The moment to hire is set by what a company already knows about its constraint, not by how bad the quarter felt. Three conditions can be checked on paper before anyone is called.

A shortlist built from referrals answers who was well liked. It does not answer who can move the constraint the company actually has — and that is the harder, more useful question to spend a week on before calling anyone.

How to run an organisational diagnostic is mostly a question of boundaries and sequence. The work starts acting on the organisation from the first interview invitation, long before anything is written.

Systemic diagnosis tools are not interchangeable. Each family asks one question, and the question chosen before any evidence is gathered decides which causes the diagnosis can reach at all.

A consulting engagement is won on a proposal that already names the fix. The diagnosis that follows is real work, but it starts with the answer already public.

Interviews, documents, data, and observation each answer a different question. The method a consultant chooses decides what the diagnosis is capable of finding before any evidence is gathered.

A business review and a diagnostic answer different questions. Skipping the review is what makes hiring consultants slower and more expensive than it should be.

The term gets used loosely enough that it has stopped meaning anything specific. It has one job: to describe the business accurately before anyone is paid to change it.

The named problem is one observation about the business, not the finding. Diagnosis is the discipline of not stopping there.

The evidence that reaches a major decision was assembled by people who hold a position on it. An objective diagnosis is the description of the business written before anyone needed it to say something.

A consulting shortlist is the second decision. The first one was made in the sentence that described the problem, and it is usually the least evidenced line in the brief.

Most engagements begin before the visible brief. They begin where the question is still forming.