Tool 4 of 32
Recurrence Ledger
Counts the problems that keep coming back, because a returning problem means a symptom is being treated while a cause survives underneath.
During Reality, from three to six months of the company's own records.
Step 2 of 7 · Days 1 to 4
Reality
What actually happened?
Ask your people for their reality first. Then read the meeting notes, the tickets, the commits and the reports against what was said. Accounts steer the search; the records referee it.
Why this step exists
The story a company tells about its last year and what actually happened are never quite the same, and the gap between them is the drift. Memory is the starting point, not the verdict. Narration sets stories, stories manage impressions, and arithmetic cannot be managed.
What you leave with
- The problems that keep coming back, counted from the records
- The last urgent deadline rebuilt from artifacts, including whether the response to the miss was subtraction or addition
- Whether estimates are still information, whether decisions survive the meeting, and how long a written warning took to be heard
- Every finding reported as a number about the company, never as a finding about a person
The usual miss
Accepting the narration as the story before the records have been read, or attaching a gap between memory and the record to a person instead of to the company.
5 tools
Tool 6 of 32
Deadline Replay
Rebuilds the last urgent deadline from the records before anyone tells the story from memory. One question in it carries more signal than anything else in the kit.
During Reality, after the last urgent push has been reconstructed from artifacts and before anyone narrates it from memory.
Tool 7 of 32
Padding Probe
Two private questions that reveal whether estimates are still information or have become negotiation.
During Reality, as two private conversations, staff side first, leadership side at least a day later, never in a meeting called for this purpose.
Tool 8 of 32
Alignment Echo
Tests whether decisions made in meetings survive the meeting, with two privately written sentences per person.
During Reality, at the close of whatever decision meetings the diagnosis window offers, often one or two sittings.
Tool 9 of 32
Dismissed-Warning Search
Finds the early written warning that already existed, and times how long the company took to hear it.
During Reality, in private conversations, then by locating the dated artifacts those conversations point to.