Operating Assessment
Find out what is holding execution back
A structured assessment of how your company sets priorities, measures progress, holds people to account and runs its management cadence. It ends with a prioritised view of what to fix first and what can safely wait.
The first conversation is free. The diagnostic is a project with its scope and price agreed in a separate proposal.
What the Operating Assessment is
The Operating Assessment is a short, structured project that works out why strategy is not turning into consistent execution. It is not a survey, and it is not a maturity questionnaire filled in by one person.
We interview the leadership team and a cross-section of managers, review the plans, dashboards and meetings the company runs today, and look at how decisions are actually made. Our checklist covers the eleven components of the Company Operating System, from strategy and goals to KPIs, reviews, ownership and decision rights, and asks three questions of each: does it exist, is it used, is it connected.
The output is a diagnosis the leadership team can agree on, and a roadmap that says what to do in what order.
Who it is for
It is most useful when the symptoms are clear and the cause is contested.
- Founder-led companies, SMEs and scale-ups of roughly 20 to 300 people
- Founders who have become the bottleneck for decisions and follow-up
- Leadership teams with more initiatives than capacity and no shared way to choose
- CEOs and COOs who cannot rely on the numbers they review each month
- Companies about to launch a new strategy, plan or structure
- Investors or boards asking for more predictability in delivery
Process
What happens
A defined sequence with a defined end point. Your team spends hours on it, not weeks.
01
Framing conversation
A working session with you to agree the questions the assessment has to answer and who should be interviewed.
02
Interviews
Confidential conversations with the leadership team and a cross-section of managers. Individual responses are never attributed.
03
Operating review
We review the strategy and plans, goals, KPIs and dashboards, meeting cadence, key processes and who owns what, as they exist today.
04
Assessment
All eleven components assessed on existence, use and connection, with the execution risks and bottlenecks recorded.
05
Readout
A working session with the leadership team: findings, evidence, priorities and the sequence we would recommend.
Deliverables
What you get
Documents your team can act on without us.
- Assessment report with findings and supporting evidence
- Operating system review across all eleven components
- Map of execution bottlenecks and risks
- Prioritised roadmap with dependencies and sequencing
- Readout session with the leadership team
How we assess
The eleven components of the Company Operating System
Every company runs on the same set of connected components, whether anyone designed them or not. This is the map we assess against. Select a component to see what it depends on and what depends on it.
Select a component to see what it depends on and what depends on it.
01
Strategy & priorities
Strategy only helps execution when it ends in a short list of priorities that leadership is willing to defend. A priority is a choice: it says what gets resources this quarter and, just as clearly, what does not.
Without it, every initiative looks important, teams pull in different directions and the founder becomes the tiebreaker for everything.
Connections
- Strategy & priorities is translated into Goals & OKRs
- Strategy & priorities sets the criteria for Project prioritisation
- Feedback & continuous improvement updates Strategy & priorities
02
Goals & OKRs
Goals turn priorities into measurable commitments with an owner and a date. OKRs are one way to write them: an objective that says where you want to be, and a handful of key results that prove you got there.
Without it, progress is a matter of opinion and the end of the quarter arrives without anyone being able to say what moved.
Connections
- Strategy & priorities is translated into Goals & OKRs
- Goals & OKRs are delivered through Roadmap & initiatives
- Goals & OKRs are tracked in KPIs & dashboards
- Roles & ownership puts a name on Goals & OKRs
03
Roadmap & initiatives
A roadmap connects each goal to the initiatives that will achieve it, in an order the team can actually deliver. It makes trade-offs visible: adding something new means moving something else.
Without it, initiatives pile up faster than they finish and the plan exists only in the founder’s head.
Connections
- Goals & OKRs are delivered through Roadmap & initiatives
- Project prioritisation decides what enters Roadmap & initiatives
- Roadmap & initiatives relies on Processes & handoffs
- Meeting cadence keeps moving Roadmap & initiatives
04
Processes & handoffs
Most execution problems happen at the handoffs: between sales and delivery, between a request and the person who acts on it. A good process is short, has an owner and says what “done” means at each step.
Without it, the same work is done differently every time, quality relies on goodwill and problems surface only when a client notices.
Connections
- Roadmap & initiatives relies on Processes & handoffs
- Roles & ownership assigns an owner to Processes & handoffs
- Feedback & continuous improvement refines Processes & handoffs
05
Project prioritisation
Every company has more good ideas than capacity. Prioritisation is the agreed rule for choosing between them: impact on the goals, effort, risk and who has the time to lead it.
Without it, the loudest request wins, too many projects run at once and few of them finish.
Connections
- Strategy & priorities sets the criteria for Project prioritisation
- Project prioritisation decides what enters Roadmap & initiatives
- Decision rights defines who approves Project prioritisation
06
Meeting cadence
Weekly leadership meetings, team check-ins, monthly and quarterly reviews: each has a purpose, a fixed agenda and a clear output. The cadence is where priorities, numbers and owners meet every week.
Without it, meetings multiply, decisions are revisited and the same topics come back week after week without closing.
Connections
- Meeting cadence schedules Business reviews
- Meeting cadence keeps moving Roadmap & initiatives
- Decision rights sets what is decided in Meeting cadence
07
KPIs & dashboards
A useful dashboard has a small set of indicators, each with a clear definition, a source, a target and an owner. It is built for the meeting where it is reviewed, not to show everything that can be measured.
Without it, each team brings its own spreadsheet, meetings start by arguing about the numbers and problems are spotted too late.
Connections
- Goals & OKRs are tracked in KPIs & dashboards
- KPIs & dashboards feeds Business reviews
08
Business reviews
A business review compares results with the plan, explains the gaps and decides what changes. Monthly reviews correct course; quarterly reviews reset priorities and goals for the next cycle.
Without it, the plan is set once a year and quietly abandoned, and course corrections happen in corridors instead of in the room.
Connections
- KPIs & dashboards feeds Business reviews
- Meeting cadence schedules Business reviews
- Business reviews surface lessons for Feedback & continuous improvement
09
Roles & ownership
Accountability starts with a name next to every goal, initiative, process and KPI. One owner per outcome, even when many people contribute, so that progress has someone who answers for it.
Without it, shared responsibility becomes no one’s responsibility and everything that is unclear flows back to the founder.
Connections
- Roles & ownership puts a name on Goals & OKRs
- Roles & ownership assigns an owner to Processes & handoffs
10
Decision rights
Decision rights make explicit who decides, who is consulted and who is informed. Written down, they let the founder step back from day-to-day decisions without losing control of the ones that matter.
Without it, decisions escalate by default, wait for the next meeting with the founder and slow everything down.
Connections
- Decision rights defines who approves Project prioritisation
- Decision rights sets what is decided in Meeting cadence
11
Feedback & continuous improvement
Every quarter shows what worked and what did not: a meeting that adds little, a KPI nobody uses, a process that keeps breaking. A short retrospective and a clear owner for each fix keep the operating system alive as the company grows.
Without it, the system slowly decays into ritual, people stop trusting it and the company drifts back to informal management.
Connections
- Business reviews surface lessons for Feedback & continuous improvement
- Feedback & continuous improvement refines Processes & handoffs
- Feedback & continuous improvement updates Strategy & priorities
What happens afterwards
The roadmap is written so that an internal team can execute it. Where you want us to implement part of it, the assessment gives both sides a precise scope instead of an estimate, so the choice between one component and the full operating system is made with a clear picture in front of it.
Operating Assessment
Book an Operating Assessment
Tell us where the company is. The first conversation is free and without obligation. Francisco or Ana reads every request and replies personally. If an Operating Assessment makes sense, you receive a written proposal with scope and price before anything starts.