Positioning Research · Methodology
How we think about a business
A disciplined way of figuring out what should change, not a framework you need to learn before we can help.
Symptom → Constraint → Consequence → Intervention → Outcome
Every engagement follows this chain, in this order. We don’t skip from symptom straight to a fix.
What someone actually notices - slow work, missed handoffs, customer frustration, duplicate effort, owner involvement, unreliable information, workload pressure. A clue, not a diagnosis.
What is actually limiting performance - a workflow, an ownership gap, an information-flow problem, a system-design choice, a missing handoff, a capacity limit, an unclear decision rule, a visibility gap.
Why the constraint actually matters - lost time, delayed revenue, reduced capacity, customer impact, rework, owner dependency, poor visibility, risk.
The least complicated credible fix for that specific constraint - not the most interesting or most sophisticated option available.
What should measurably improve as a result - defined before the intervention starts, not decided afterward.
Once the constraint is clear, we don’t default to the most impressive fix
The right intervention is the smallest one that reliably solves the actual constraint - roughly in this order of how much change each introduces. We don’t have a preferred technology going in.
Simplify. Remove a step that doesn’t need to exist.
Standardize. Make a repeatable thing actually repeatable, the same way every time.
Configure. Use more of what a tool you already own can already do.
Connect. Stop two systems from requiring the same information twice.
Automate. Remove a step that’s manual only because nobody built the automatic version.
Build. When nothing existing fits, build something narrow and purpose-made.
No build. Sometimes the constraint isn’t technical at all, and the right answer is to leave it alone.
This isn’t a ladder where the bottom is always worse. A checklist can be the healthiest answer. See our full approach for why.
Two different jobs, one engagement
Deciding what should change, and making the change operationally real
Figuring out the right intervention and actually implementing it are both part of what we do - not a diagnosis handed off to someone else to build, and not a build started before the constraint is actually understood.
Underneath all of this
We look at the business as a connected system, not a list of departments
Grow, Flow, and Keep describe how a customer moves through the business - from opportunity to customer, through delivery and payment, into whether they come back. A symptom in one place often traces back to a constraint somewhere earlier in that chain. We go deeper than this internally, but this is the part that's useful to see up front.
Explore Systems & WorkflowsSee this applied to your own business
Bring one part of the business that is taking too much time, dropping work, requiring too much coordination, or creating uncertainty.
Tell me what’s getting stuck