How to Prepare Your Team for a Strategy Diagnostic

A Strategic Diagnostic is only as useful as the information that goes into it. Preparation on the client side is not about producing polished materials. It is about making sure the right people are available and the right documents are accessible from the first week.

Documents worth gathering before week one ¶

The most useful documents for a diagnostic are not the strategy presentations. They are the operational reports, the board papers, the budget variance analyses, and the post-mortems from projects that did not go as planned. These documents show what the organisation actually did, as opposed to what it intended to do.

A P&L for the past two to three years, a list of the ten largest decisions made in the past twelve months, and any existing customer or market research are a reasonable starting set. Nothing needs to be formatted or summarised in advance.

• P&L for the past 2-3 years
• Board or investor papers from the past four quarters
• Post-mortems or retrospectives from major projects
• Any existing customer research or market analysis
• A list of the ten largest decisions made in the past twelve months

Who should be involved in the interviews ¶

The diagnostic interviews cover four to six members of the leadership team. The goal is not consensus. It is to understand how different people in the organisation perceive the same situation, because the gaps between those perceptions are usually where the most useful diagnostic information lives.

It is worth including at least one person who is known to hold a dissenting view on the current strategy. Their perspective is often the most useful.

What the four weeks actually look like ¶

Week one is document review and interview scheduling. Weeks two and three are the interviews themselves, typically 60 to 90 minutes each, conducted by video call or in person. Week four is analysis and writing. The report is delivered at the end of week four, followed by a presentation session with the full leadership team.

The 90-day check-in session is scheduled at the point of delivery, not left open-ended.

Preparation does not need to be elaborate. The diagnostic is designed to work with whatever information exists, not to require information that does not. The introductory call is the right place to discuss what is available.