An open measurement standard
Revenue tells you what already happened. This tells you what to fix.
A measure of whether a company can win and keep customers, and what is stopping it. It names the root cause, routes the company to the right support, and is taken again ninety days later so the movement shows up long before the accounts do.
The whole method is published. Read it, check the arithmetic, run it yourself.
An illustration of a typical 198-company programme, not our own figures. Our current numbers are below.
Current state
Counts as at 30 July 2026, excluding test and duplicate records. Thirty one is early and we're not going to dress it up. It's enough to diagnose a company. It isn't enough to tell you how you compare with your peers, which is why no peer benchmark is published. The threshold for publishing one is in the method, and we're nowhere near it.
The problem
Every measure you’ve arrives after the point where you could have acted on it.
At the front, the attendance register: applications, attendees, businesses supported. Counted at the door. It tells you the room was full.
At the back, the accounts: revenue, headcount, survival. Real, and far too late.
Between them, nothing. And that gap is the only place anyone can still act.
Counted at the front
- Applications received
- Businesses supported
- Attendees and introductions
- Workshops completed
True on the day. Silent on whether anything changed.
Counted at the back
- Revenue
- Jobs
- Funding raised
- Survival
Real, and years after the decision that caused it.
The missing middle
- Can the company sell?
- Does it know who it is selling to?
- Can it control a deal?
- Is the way of working repeatable?
- Is any of it improving?
Measurable now. Actionable now.
Why the method is public
Nobody adopts a measure they aren't allowed to inspect.
Every standard worth the name is published: accounting standards, cyber certification schemes, clinical instruments, impact frameworks. The ones that stayed secret stayed products.
- You can read every question and scale before anyone answers one.
- You can reproduce the arithmetic by hand from the published rules.
- You can verify determinism yourself against our public test vectors.
- You can check any deployment against the version it claims to run.
- What stays ours is the diagnostic library, the routing, and the register of who has been measured.
The model
Four stages, four root causes, sixteen cells.
A company answers 37 questions: 32 on what it’s built, 5 on what’s actually producing output now. Those answers fill the grid below.
The stages are where a symptom shows up. The root causes are why. Two different questions, and the fix depends on the second one. Click any cell.
The grid is the same for every company. The questions that fill it are not: a subscription software founder and a direct-to-consumer brand are asked about different evidence, at one of three maturity levels. How that works.
| Product | People | Process | Repeatability |
|---|
Values shown are the worked example published in the method. Darker means weaker.
Each cell is scored from two questions on a five point scale. The stage score is the average of its row, the root cause score the average of its column.
The two halves
What you have built, and whether it is running.
The headline score is made of two separate measures, and the gap between them is often more useful than the number itself.
Capability is the engine: what the company has actually built and can evidence. Thirty two questions, the sixteen cells above.
Momentum is whether that engine is producing output right now. Five questions, against what the company needs to be true.
Most assessments average these into one number and lose the finding. A company scoring 70 on capability and 30 on momentum has a completely different problem from one scoring 30 and 70, and a single number would hide it.
| Capability | Momentum | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Low | Not built and not producing. Pick one stage and install the basics. |
| Low | High | Results are coming from effort, not from a system. It stops when the founder stops. |
| High | Low | Built and nobody is running it. Usually who inspects what, and how often. |
| High | High | Built and producing. Attention shifts to keeping customers and durability. |
Both are reported separately on every result, alongside the headline score, and both are tracked at the rescore.
What a company actually receives
Eight minutes in. This out.
Not a percentage and a suggestion to try harder. A position, the stage where the problem shows up, the cause underneath it, and the first thing to do about it.
The same result is what aggregates into the cohort reporting a licensee buys. One artefact, two audiences.
From score to support
Two ways out of a diagnosis.
Most root causes have a fix the company can carry out itself. It gets three specific actions, each with an owner, a date and the evidence that would show it worked. No adviser, no cost, no waiting. That is the loop: measure, act, measure again.
Some fixes need a person. There the stage and root cause determine the category of support indicated, and the company is routed to the provider you already fund for that category. You keep your own providers. Routing aims the spend you have.
The diagnosis decides which of the two applies. That protects your budget, because not every company needs a provider, and it is what makes movement attributable: a report can only say what preceded a change if something recorded whether it was an action or an intervention.
- Measure. 37 questions, eight minutes, free to the company
- Diagnose. The stage where it shows up, and the root cause underneath
- Fix. Specific actions the company can take itself, with an owner and a date
- Route. Where a person is needed, to the provider you already fund
- Rescore. Movement, set against whichever of the two happened
Routing indicates support. It never rations it, and it is never an eligibility decision.
What licensees get
Which customers are building capability
Per customer, dated, ahead of the account showing it.
Public bodiesMovement, not throughput
One instrument across every delivery partner, so two programmes can finally be compared.
UniversitiesEvidence for the next bid
Measured in, measured out, comparable across cohorts and years.
InvestorsPortfolio movement
The same instrument twice a year, from the day of investment.
Take it. It’s free, and it stays free.
Eight minutes, no obligation, and the result is yours whether or not you ever speak to us.