People Diagnostic
Find out what is actually holding the organisation back
A structured assessment of how your organisation is designed, decided and managed. It ends with a prioritised view of what to fix first and what can safely wait.
What the diagnostic is
The People Diagnostic is a short, structured project that works out where the real problems are in how the company manages people. It is not a survey, and it is not a maturity questionnaire filled in by the People team.
We interview the leadership team and a cross-section of managers, review how decisions are actually made, and examine the People systems that exist. Our checklist covers the eleven components every company manages people through — from structure and roles to pay, routines and data — 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.
- Companies of roughly 20 to 300 people
- Leadership teams with competing theories about what is slowing them down
- Founders who have become the bottleneck for decisions they no longer want to own
- Companies about to invest in a restructure, an HR system or a hiring push
- People leaders who need an external read to support a case internally
- Investors or boards asking organisational questions nobody currently owns
Process
What happens
A defined sequence with a defined end point. Your team spends hours on it, not weeks.
01
Framing call
Forty-five minutes with you to agree the questions the diagnostic 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
Systems review
We review structure, role definitions, performance approach, levels, pay logic, policies and management routines as they exist today.
04
Assessment
All eleven components assessed on existence, use and connection, with the structural and management risks 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.
- Diagnostic report with findings and supporting evidence
- People systems maturity assessment across all eleven components
- Structural and management risk register
- Prioritised roadmap with dependencies and sequencing
- Executive readout session with the leadership team
How we assess
The eleven components we look at
Every company manages people through 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
Organisation structure
Structure allocates ownership before anything else happens. It determines which outcomes have a single owner, how many layers a decision travels through, and where the interfaces between teams fall.
Without it, coordination cost grows faster than headcount and work stalls at the seams.
Connections
- Organisation structure determines Roles & decision rights
- People data & metrics reveals strain in Organisation structure
02
Roles & decision rights
A role is not a job title. It is a scope of ownership plus a set of decisions the holder can take without asking. Written properly, it removes the two most expensive ambiguities in a growing company: who decides, and who is accountable when it goes wrong.
Without it, decisions escalate by default and accountability dissolves into consensus.
Connections
- Organisation structure determines Roles & decision rights
- Roles & decision rights specifies Hiring & onboarding
- Roles & decision rights sets expectations for Goals & performance
03
Hiring & onboarding
Hiring is where the role definition is tested. A vague role produces a vague brief, an inconsistent assessment and a new joiner who spends their first quarter working out what they were hired to own.
Without it, hiring follows internal volume rather than the plan, and onboarding is left to the manager who has least time.
Connections
- Roles & decision rights specifies Hiring & onboarding
- Hiring & onboarding feeds Goals & performance
- Culture & communication filters Hiring & onboarding
04
Goals & performance
Performance is where role expectations become measurable. It only works when expectations were defined upstream: assessment cannot create clarity that the role definition never had.
Without it, ratings drift upward, calibration is impossible and promotion becomes an argument about advocacy.
Connections
- Roles & decision rights sets expectations for Goals & performance
- Hiring & onboarding feeds Goals & performance
- Goals & performance creates evidence for Feedback & development
- Management routines operates Goals & performance
- Goals & performance informs progression in Career frameworks
- People data & metrics reveals drift in Goals & performance
05
Feedback & development
Feedback is the system’s short loop. Where it works, the performance cycle confirms what people already knew. Where it does not, the cycle becomes an annual surprise and loses its authority.
Without it, problems surface late, development is generic and good people leave before anyone knows why.
Connections
- Goals & performance creates evidence for Feedback & development
- Management routines operates Feedback & development
- Feedback & development develops towards Career frameworks
06
Management routines
Managers are the operating layer. One-to-ones, team meetings, goal reviews and escalation paths are where every other component either happens or does not. This is the component most often assumed and least often designed.
Without it, each manager invents their own practice and the employee experience depends on which team you joined.
Connections
- Management routines operates Goals & performance
- Management routines operates Feedback & development
- People policies bounds Management routines
- Culture & communication shapes how managers run Management routines
07
People policies
Policies exist to make routine decisions fast and consistent. A good policy framework answers the situations that actually arise and tells a manager where their discretion ends.
Without it, every recurring question becomes an escalation and informal exceptions quietly become precedent.
Connections
- People policies bounds Management routines
08
Career frameworks
Levels give performance somewhere to point. They define scope, autonomy and complexity at each stage, which is what makes a promotion decision reviewable by someone who was not in the room.
Without it, promotion becomes the only recognition mechanism and titles inflate to compensate.
Connections
- Goals & performance informs progression in Career frameworks
- Feedback & development develops towards Career frameworks
- Career frameworks sets the rules for Compensation
09
Compensation
Compensation is the most public output of the whole system. Every inconsistency upstream in roles, levels or performance becomes visible here, usually in a conversation a manager was not prepared for.
Without it, pay is set by negotiation strength and the logic becomes impossible to defend.
Connections
- Career frameworks sets the rules for Compensation
- Compensation signals what is valued in Culture & communication
- People data & metrics reveals dispersion in Compensation
10
Culture & communication
Culture is not a layer on top of the system. It is the pattern the system produces: who gets promoted, what gets tolerated, which trade-offs are made under pressure.
Without deliberate design, culture is set by whatever the most senior people tolerate.
Connections
- Culture & communication shapes how managers run Management routines
- Culture & communication filters Hiring & onboarding
- Compensation signals what is valued in Culture & communication
11
People data & metrics
A small number of indicators tell you whether the system is working: rating distribution, promotion patterns, pay dispersion, regretted attrition and time in role. Data does not fix anything. It tells you where to look.
Without it, problems are discovered through resignations and exit conversations.
Connections
- People data & metrics reveals strain in Organisation structure
- People data & metrics reveals drift in Goals & performance
- People data & metrics reveals dispersion in Compensation
What happens afterwards
The roadmap is written so that an internal team can execute it. Where you want us to build part of it, the diagnostic gives both sides a precise scope instead of an estimate, so the choice between one system and the full programme is made with real numbers in front of it.
People Diagnostic
Request a People Diagnostic
Tell us where you are. We read every submission ourselves and reply with a view on whether the diagnostic is the right starting point.