The Operating Diagnostic
A focused assessment inside your business that ends with a findings presentation and a written plan. Scope, schedule, and fixed fee are agreed before any work begins.
What we look at
Strategy and growth
Strategic priorities, growth objectives, what is holding growth back, and whether the current organization can scale.
Financial and commercial
Where profit comes from and where it leaks: pricing, labor productivity, expense structure, and how quickly work turns into cash.
Operations
Workflow, capacity, and throughput; quality and rework; and how consistently each location or team runs the work.
Leadership and organization
Roles, accountability, who decides what, how leadership communicates, and how much still depends on the owner.
Systems and reporting
Whether the numbers leadership sees match what actually happened and arrive in time to act on, and whether your core systems are set up well and actually used.
Expansion and integration
Readiness to add locations or absorb an acquisition: standardization, infrastructure, and the risks of growing faster.
How a diagnostic runs
Before we arrive
Preparation
We review the records you provide, confirm objectives with your executive sponsor, and schedule interviews and site access.
Monday
Alignment and interviews
Leadership priorities, management interviews, and first observations.
Tuesday
How the work moves
Processes, capacity, productivity, and management structure, observed where the work happens, not just in the reports.
Wednesday
The numbers
Financial and operating performance, with targeted interviews and follow-up on what the data shows.
Thursday
Findings and priorities
We validate findings, size each opportunity, and test every recommendation against one question: is the juice worth the squeeze?
Friday
Findings presentation
A half-day session with your leadership team on what we found, what to do first, and what comes next. The written report follows within three business days.
The standard five-day schedule is shown. A focused diagnostic follows the same sequence in less time.
What you get
- An executive summary of the business's strengths, constraints, and material risks.
- Findings across the financial, operational, and organizational areas that matter most to your objectives.
- Prioritized recommendations, ranked by importance, urgency, feasibility, and expected impact.
- Immediate priorities for the next thirty days, and a 30-to-90-day roadmap for what follows.
- The findings presentation with your leadership team.
Every finding separates what we observed from our judgment and from what needs further work.
Findings summary
Example Services Co.
Illustrative example, not a client engagement
| # | Finding | Area | Impact | Effort | First step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Completed work waits too long to be invoiced, so cash trails revenue every month. | Financial | High | Low | Same-day close-out and invoicing standard, owned by operations. |
| 2 | Pricing has not kept pace with labor and material costs on the most common jobs. | Commercial | High | Medium | Reprice the top twenty services against current cost. |
| 3 | Scheduling decisions run through one person, which caps how much work the team can take on. | Organization | Medium | Medium | Written dispatch rules and a trained backup. |
| 4 | Leadership sees results a month late, after the chance to correct them has passed. | Reporting | Medium | Low | A one-page weekly scorecard, reviewed every Monday. |
| 5 | Repeat visits to fix incomplete work are not tracked, so their cost is invisible. | Operations | Medium | Low | Log every return visit with a cause code. |
Sized to your business
Standard
Five-day diagnostic
For established, multi-location, or more complex businesses, and for work before or after a transaction.
When the scope is narrower
Focused diagnostic
A shorter assessment for a smaller operation or one well-defined problem.
One fixed fee, set in the proposal before we start. No hourly billing, no open-ended scope, and no additional days without your written approval.
On site, remote, or both. Travel is approved in advance: transportation and lodging at actual cost with no markup, plus a fixed daily meals allowance.
Every engagement is led by Justin Sonntag, with experienced operating associates added when the scope calls for a second consultant. The diagnostic stands on its own; implementation is a separate decision.
How to start
A diagnostic is the right first step when the business should be performing better and you can't yet say exactly where the gap is. It also fits after an acquisition, before a sale or capital raise, or when the business needs to run without the owner.
It starts with a thirty-minute conversation. Under a mutual confidentiality agreement, you then share a short, agreed set of reports, typically recent financial statements and a few operating reports, and we confirm whether a diagnostic makes sense.
If it does, you receive a proposal setting out the questions we will answer, who is assigned, the schedule, the deliverables, and the fixed fee. Then you decide.
Find out whether a diagnostic makes sense.
Book a thirty-minute conversation. If it isn't the right fit, we'll say so.