Fixed price • 2–4 weeks • £8–12k
A two-to-four-week diagnostic that names the structural constraint and gives you a CFO-ready account of what to change. Diagnosis first. Never a framework.
Progress has slowed. Not because your people aren't capable, but because the system they're operating in has reached its limits.
Decisions take too long. Learning is slow. Effort doesn't translate cleanly into outcomes. The friction is almost always structural, not personal. Working harder won't fix it, and neither will another framework.
I work where problems are messy, ownership is unclear, and simple answers have already failed. I find where the constraint actually sits, and I name it. Clearly enough that you can defend it upwards.
The details change. The structural patterns underneath are remarkably consistent.
You invested in agile, SAFe, or some flavour of transformation. Teams adopted the ceremonies but the underlying decision-making never changed. Progress slowed and people are tired.
The constraint is usually structural. Information doesn’t flow, decisions take too long, and feedback loops are broken. The framework wasn’t the problem. The operating model was.
You’ve run pilots, done training, maybe built a chatbot. But nothing has stuck and the organisation is no more capable than it was six months ago.
AI tools bolted onto an operating model that wasn’t designed for them won’t create change. The model needs to evolve first. Then AI accelerates it.
You’re shipping features but not fast enough. Learning but not systematically. Everyone’s working hard, but effort doesn’t translate cleanly into outcomes.
The constraint isn’t effort or capability. It’s how work, decisions, and learning actually flow. When those are misaligned, working harder makes things worse.
You know something is wrong. Every consultant gives you a framework, not a diagnosis. You need someone who will tell you what they actually see.
Most consultants sell methodology. What you need is someone close enough to the work to see the real constraint, and direct enough to name it.
The constraint, named. A structured diagnostic across how work, decisions, and learning actually flow. Interviews, observation, and evidence, not workshops and sticky notes.
A CFO-ready account of what to change. Written to survive board scrutiny. You can act on it with me, with someone else, or alone. It stands on its own.
The intervention sequence. What to change first, what to leave alone, and what will make things worse if touched at the wrong layer.
What working looks like, described. The diagnosis ends with the target state, not just the fault: decisions made at the edge that stay made, lessons that change behaviour in days, effort that translates. You'll know what you're steering towards, not just what you're steering away from.
This is a diagnostic, not a Trojan horse for a retainer. It runs two to four weeks at a fixed £8–12k, and then it ends. If the diagnosis points to something worth changing, the follow-on shapes are public and priced — usually the Operating Model Redesign Sprint — and the decision to continue is yours.
You have probably had the twenty-consultant army that moved in and never left. This is the opposite shape.
Find where the constraint actually sits. Not where the org chart says it should be.
Build the thing that proves the pathway exists. Working software, not a slide.
Get it into live use with your people, on real cases, until it is load-bearing without me in the room.
Every engagement has a defined end. Extension is your choice, never my pitch.
I leave, and it keeps running. If you want a consultant who moves in for eighteen months, I am the wrong person — the whole point is that you don't need me.
I don't publish client names. Ever. The work is confidential and stays that way, which means the evidence has to be public and checkable instead:
Co-authored with Bryan Cassady. A field guide for leaders navigating transformation with AI — it describes the destination this diagnostic points you at. Free to download, because the point is people using it.
Download the book →University of Bath’s innovation centre. Institutional, public, checkable. Plus 20+ years of transformation delivery and a US patent from a previous life.
Verify on LinkedIn →Value stream mapping is canonical Lean work. I rebuilt it as an AI-coached conversation you can use right now. This is what "agile plus AI" looks like when someone actually builds it.
Try Flowscope →So here is the evidence instead. I publish my own failed assumptions, my own cost mistakes, and the arguments against my own tools:
I pointed my decision engine at itself and published what it said. This is what you get from me: the uncomfortable version.
Four letters from 2027 looking back at the decisions being made now. Plus a sceptic’s coda asking whether the framing is wrong.
The operating model is the bottleneck: how it slows synthesis, prioritisation, and experimentation.
Planning around the EU AI Act? The deadline most people panicked about has moved — the real one is December 2027. Read the myth-bust →
From the field
A FTSE 250 technology executive sensing a bottleneck in outcomes — and unable to get a straight answer about why. The diagnosis put one in writing: work arriving unshaped, delivery queuing behind a handful of people. The answer was process. Not capacity, not AI.
Lever: Process — not capacity, not AI
Details anonymised. Clients are never named without permission.
A short conversation is usually enough to know whether I can help. If I can't, I will say so.
Want a smaller first step? The 90-minute Maturity Review (£750) gives you a first reading of what's stuck — AI is one lens, not the assumption — and the fee is credited in full against this diagnostic within 30 days.
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