Run METHOD™ Diagnostic

The METHOD Diagnostic

Fifteen minutes. Ten dimensions. The honest shape of your operation.

This is the tool we run at the start of real engagements, not a marketing quiz. It scores how your business actually runs, from the moment work enters to the moment it reports. One instruction matters more than any other: score what happens on a normal Tuesday, not what the process document says.

How scoring works

0

Not present

It does not exist. Nobody would claim it does.

1

Inconsistent

It exists on a good week. It depends on who is in and how busy things are.

2

Enforced and measurable

It happens every time, and you could prove it with numbers, not memory.

Be hard on yourself here. A generous score gets you a flattering number and a useless result. An honest score gets you the exact place to start.

What we score

Ten dimensions, in plain English.

1. Structured entry. Does work arrive through a front door, or from anywhere, in any shape?

2. Upstream decisions. Are the rules decided before the work starts, or negotiated in the middle of it?

3. Exception-led humans. Do your people handle the unusual, or touch every single step of every job?

4. State-based outputs. Can anyone say what state a piece of work is in without asking someone?

5. Quality gates. Is good defined, or is it whoever checked it that day?

6. Feedback to rules. Do results change how you work, or just get reported?

7. Access governance. Does the right access exist on purpose, or by accumulation?

8. Signal before commitment. Do you test demand before you spend, or after?

9. Asset multiplication. Does one piece of work feed many outputs, or get made once and die?

10. Self-improving system. Do reviews change the system, or just fill a meeting?

Low scores on 1 to 4 are capture leaks. Low scores on 6, 9, and 10 are recovery leaks. Either way, they will look familiar: they are the Leak Map, measured in your business instead of described on ours.

Run it

Score the ten dimensions below.

You get a score out of 20 and, more usefully, a shape. We come back to you with one of three honest answers: a fixed-scope fix, a route to the deeper work, or “not yet, and here is what to sort first, free.” The full explanation lives at what happens after the diagnostic.

How to use:

Score from 0–2
0 = Not present
1 = Inconsistent
2 = Enforced and measurable

Do requests reliably enter through defined forms or systems, rather than messages, emails, or verbal asks?
Are approval criteria and decision rules defined before work begins, rather than during execution?
Do people intervene only when something falls outside the normal flow, rather than managing every step?
Does work finish in a clearly defined state (approved, live, completed), rather than “in progress” or “done-ish”?
Is quality assessed using defined criteria or thresholds, rather than subjective judgement?
Do metrics and outcomes actively change how future decisions are made?
Are roles, permissions, and access to systems or IP intentionally granted and reviewed?
Is demand or viability validated before committing time, money, or resources?
Does one piece of work intentionally create multiple downstream outputs or reuse opportunities?
Do regular reviews result in logged decisions and changes to how the system operates?

Fifteen minutes, and you will know more about how your business actually runs than most owners ever write down. Can you free up fifteen minutes? That is actually your greatest challenge.