A paid, fixed-scope read of what is actually wrong, and what it is worth fixing, before anyone commits to a turnaround.
Nobody should buy an implementation they have not seen scoped. The usual sequence asks a board to approve a large engagement on the strength of a proposal written by the people who would be paid to deliver it. The Diagnostic inverts that: a short, priced piece of work that produces the map first, so the decision to implement is made against evidence instead of against a pitch.
This is the read run inside a multi-billion-dollar retail footprint across hundreds of locations, where compliance moved from 65 percent to 92 percent and private brand grew by double digits year over year. The method travels because the questions do: where the margin leaks, which of it is structural, and which of it a field team can close this quarter.
Fixed scope, a fixed end date, and a map you can act on with or without us.
Statement, mix, labor and shrink read together rather than in isolation, because a department that looks profitable on one and expensive on another is usually the one worth opening first.
The gap between what the reporting says and what a store looks like on a Thursday afternoon is the finding. It cannot be reached from a data room, so the work happens in the field as well as in the file.
Each opportunity sized in dollars, ranked by what a field team can actually close, with a named owner and a date. Alongside it, the list of things that look like opportunities and are not.
What is wrong, what it costs per period, and how confident the read is on each item.
Sequenced by what a field team can close, not by what is easiest to describe.
The opportunities that do not survive contact with a real operating week, said out loud, with the reason.
Enough evidence to approve an implementation, run it internally, or decline it.
The Diagnostic ends on its end date, with the map in your hands. Implementation is a separate and entirely optional engagement, priced only once the plan exists and you have read it. Taking the map and running it with your own team is a good outcome, and for some businesses it is the right one.
Built for multi-unit retail, grocery and convenience operators, and for the investors and boards who own them, where the question is whether a turnaround is worth underwriting before it is underwritten.