The planning baseline
Leadership teams plan from the inside view. The inside view is wrong in predictable ways.
Confidential stakeholder interviews and a leadership team diagnostic, before your strategy day.
Before you plan, we interview 10 to 15 of your people one to one and turn what they say into evidence your team can plan from.
Free: send three strategic priorities, and I'll tell you which survive two strategy tests.
The starting point
The hardest part of planning is agreeing where you're starting from.
Given what gets spent on the back of a planning event, the diagnosis should never be a guess. Too often it is.
Without it
Days of circular debate
Opinions, individual biases and the loudest voice shape the diagnosis. The plan starts from the wrong place.
With external discovery calls
A starting point everyone accepts
Confidential calls of up to 90 minutes. Neutrality and anonymity help people say what they actually think, and every belief becomes something you can test.
Why they're hard to do
Good discovery calls take interviewing, coaching and discovery skills.
Knowing when to adapt a question, where to go deeper, and how to keep peeling back the layers until you reach the root cause.
- What people sayThe first answer
- What they meanThe follow-up
- What's behind itThe pattern
- The root causeWhat to plan from
What surfaces
- Real priorities
- Hidden opportunities
- What works
- What's broken
- Implied vs lived values
- Guiding principles
- Testable beliefs
- TranscriptsEvery call, captured in full
- Our AI promptsInsights processed and structured
- Human judgementOur experience on top
We don't believe this can ever be done as well from the inside.
The alternatives
Why the usual ways miss it
- You do it
yourselfPeople tell the boss what the boss can hear. - Engagement
surveyTick-boxes, and nobody asks the follow-up. - "The SLT
already knows"The inside view, checked against itself. - Big
diagnosticThorough, but slow and often generic. - The planning
baselineAn outsider, one to one, in about two weeks.
This is where you think your people already tell you the truth. Some do. Ask the others.
The way out
From "think it" to "know it" in two weeks
- Listen10 to 15 confidential calls over about a week, up to 90 minutes each, across levels and functions.
- CodeEvery interview is coded into themes and counted. Leaders get a first playback after five interviews.
- TestBeliefs become hypotheses with tests and success criteria. Strategy candidates face two tests.
- DecideYour team plans from evidence: what's working, what's broken, what people believe, and which choices are real.
Plan from what's true.
Who it's for
When an accurate baseline can change everything
CEOs, MDs and owners of businesses of 50 to 500 people: owner-managed, group-owned or PE-backed.
- Before an annual plan, offsite or strategy refresh
- A new leader, in the first 90 days
- A plan that didn't land last time
- Big change on the way
Questions people ask first
What is a planning baseline?
Before a leadership team plans, an independent outsider interviews 10 to 15 people across the business one to one, then turns what they say into evidence: what's working, what's broken, what people believe, and which choices are real.
How long does a planning baseline take?
About two weeks from first interview to report. Interviews take about a week, each up to 90 minutes, with a first playback to leaders after five interviews.
Is it anonymous?
Yes. Interviews are confidential, and themes are reported without names. In small firms anonymity takes care, so we generalise detail to protect people.
What are the two strategy tests?
The logo swap: if a competitor could say it unchanged, it isn't your strategy. Imagine the opposite: if no sensible business would choose the opposite, it's a goal, not a choice.
