We diagnose the whole operation, fix what matters most and stay to make sure it works.
Built for established businesses where growth has brought complexity: across people, systems, locations, brands, markets and suppliers.
We look across all six and grade every area on the evidence. Most arrive with the fix already chosen. We find where the value is actually leaking first.
More people. More locations. More systems. More products, brands, markets or suppliers. Underneath, much of the business still runs the way it did when you were half the size. The systems, numbers and decisions have not kept pace. It still works, but value leaks through the gaps, while opportunities the business has already earned stay out of reach. Two things are usually true at once. Most only feel the first.
Whichever door you come through; feeling the strain or getting ahead of it; we look for both, because the problem you can see isn't always where the greatest value sits.
We ran an independent look across the whole business for an established, multi-site operator, decades old and eight figures in revenue. Its leaders expected a technology problem. The evidence pointed somewhere else. The value showed up in three places, on three different clocks. Waste bleeding out every year. Capability already bought but sitting idle. Growth the business cannot reach the way it runs today. The immediate fixes didn't require another technology build.
Diagnostic-derived estimates, illustrative of scale. Not audited results or guaranteed outcomes. Client anonymised at their request.
On paper the roles look clean and the reporting looks solid. The real operation runs somewhere else: on a few people the place cannot replace, systems no one owns, spend no one can trace and numbers no one quite trusts. The four below are examples we meet often. Every business is different, so what we uncover is whatever the evidence turns up, never a fixed checklist.
On paper everyone has a clean lane. Underneath, the lanes cross. The same people wear multiple hats, authority and accountability sit in different places and critical decisions funnel through a handful of overloaded people. We map how decisions actually move, then reset the ownership and boundaries causing the friction; usually without reorganising the business.
It starts small. One report looks off. Someone builds a side spreadsheet to check it, then keeps using it. Soon every team runs on its own version of the truth. In one diagnostic, leadership, finance and the front line had each independently stopped trusting the reported numbers. Every decision opened with an argument about whose figure was right, while pricing and investment calls got made on numbers no one believed.
The systems on the org chart are often there to keep auditors happy. The real work runs elsewhere. In one diagnostic the sanctioned platform was used mainly for compliance, while the business actually ran on personal spreadsheets, email templates and outsourced hands moving data between systems that never connected. Management built dashboards to bridge the gap, but no one on the floor trusted them, so each team kept its own workaround, many saved in staff members' personal accounts with no backup. It holds until a sheet breaks or the person who kept it leaves. By then the knowledge has walked out the door.
Most teams can tell you what they spend on marketing. Far fewer can tell you what it earns. Ad platforms only get cheaper and sharper when results flow back to them. In one diagnostic that loop was barely connected: roughly half the conversion signal never made it back, because the tracking was set up badly. The internal team could not wire it up. The agency had not noticed. So spend kept buying the wrong clicks. A mid-six-figure sum a year went unclaimed. Reconnecting the loop is often the fastest upside in the building.
Three steps, usually in sequence. We diagnose before we prescribe, so what we recommend follows the evidence and not a fix chosen in advance. The fix and the operating work follow when they earn their place.
Most engagements begin with the diagnosis. Not all need to. Some businesses arrive knowing they need an operating executive in the chair, so we start at Run. Others want the opposite: their own leaders coached to govern and decide well, from the metrics that hold a supplier to account to sitting in, independently, on a performance review. We build the team's judgement rather than run the business for them.
We look independently, with nothing riding on what we find. We may recommend building something, replacing something, changing a supplier or doing nothing at all. Whatever the evidence supports is what you will hear.
And when the evidence calls for implementation, we have the range to follow the problem across operations, technology, data, AI and growth; rather than stopping where another firm's specialism ends.
The Free Health Check is a short self-assessment across the six areas we examine. In around 3 minutes, it shows where you may be most exposed and where the biggest opportunities could sit. It isn't a substitute for the evidence-led Diagnostic, but it's a sharp place to start.
Start the Free Health CheckExperience shaped across major organisations, then applied inside established businesses that have outgrown the way they operate. Across healthcare, retail, technology, services and industry.
No. The report is the record, not the point. What you're paying for is an independent read of the whole business: where value is leaking and what's genuinely worth fixing. You get a ranked set of decisions you can act on, with the evidence sitting behind each one. If it helps, we stay on to run the fix. Plenty of clients take the read and run it themselves.
Because the diagnosis comes before the recommendation. We measure the whole business without a predetermined solution and we'll tell you when the right answer is to do nothing, do it yourself or use someone else. If the evidence doesn't justify a fix, we don't pitch one.
Often you know the symptoms. What's less clear is which problem is costing you most, as well as whether the fix you have in mind is the right one. Senior teams usually carry three or four competing theories. The diagnosis settles which one the evidence supports, then sizes it. If we confirm what you already knew, you've bought certainty before you spend on a build. That's usually the cheaper mistake to avoid.
Fixed fee, agreed before we start. No day-rate meter. A focused diagnostic runs about eight weeks; a comprehensive one runs ten to twelve. The Free Health Check is three minutes and costs nothing. The paid readout call that follows is modest, with about half credited against a diagnostic if you proceed.
A consultancy tends to arrive with a methodology to run; an IT provider arrives with a stack to sell. Both have a fix in mind before they've measured you. We start solution-agnostic and measure first, so the recommendation might well be keep what you have. We're also small and senior: you get operators reading your business, not a pyramid of analysts. And we'll say when you don't need us.
The Free Health Check is a fifteen-minute self-assessment across six areas. It's indicative: a useful steer on where to look, not an independent verdict. The Diagnostic is the independent, evidence-led assessment. We examine the business ourselves over eight to twelve weeks and give you a ranked, costed set of decisions backed by evidence. Think of the Health Check as the prompt and the Diagnostic as the read you can act on.
Healthcare, care and allied services is where we go deepest, so that's where we start. The method isn't sector-bound: measuring the whole business before prescribing a fix works anywhere the stakes are high and the answer isn't obvious. If you're outside health and the problem is serious, talk to us. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right firm or whether you'd be better served elsewhere.
Start with the Free Health Check. Or talk to us about an independent diagnostic. Either way, you'll get a clearer view of what is worth fixing first.