Disclaimer

The short version

A report is a mirror held up to your own answers. It is a self-assessment, not advice, and we have not seen your business. Use it to decide what to look at next, not as the reason to sign something.

What a report is

You choose, for each practice, the sentence that best describes what happens in your business today. The report places those answers on a five-stage grid, names the pattern they make if there is one, and suggests two or three moves that usually follow from that pattern.

The report is only as good as the answers. It reflects what you told us on the day, from your seat. Someone else in the same business might place a few practices differently, and a team view would show that. It is not an audit, a review or an opinion on your business from anyone who has looked at it.

What a report is not

• It is not financial, legal, tax, accounting, investment or other professional advice, and it is not a substitute for any of them.
• It does not create an adviser and client relationship between you and us. Reading a report, forwarding one, or pressing "I need some help" does not change that.
• It is not a prediction. A move that usually helps a business at your stage may not help yours, and nothing in a report promises a result.
• It is not a valuation, a credit assessment, a compliance opinion or, for the deal checks when they are live, due diligence.

Decisions about your business are yours. For a decision with money, people or contracts at stake, take advice from someone who knows your business and is qualified to give it.

Benchmarks

A benchmark compares your placements with anonymised, aggregated answers from other businesses in the same cut. We show one only once enough comparable firms are in that cut, and the sample size is always shown. The other firms placed themselves, as you did. A benchmark tells you where self-assessed peers sit. It does not tell you where you should be, and a small sample is shown as a small sample so you can weigh it.

The calculators

The calculators on /tools do arithmetic on the numbers you type in. Nothing you enter leaves the page, and nothing is stored. The results are illustrations of a relationship, such as what a price change does to profit at a given margin. They are not forecasts, and they know nothing about your business beyond what you typed.

The reference pages

The reference pages describe the stages-of-excellence method and the grids in general terms. They are current at the date shown on each page. They are general information for any reader, not advice to a particular business, and the figures on them carry their sources.

If you forward a report

You may share your own report with anyone. Whoever reads it should know that it is a self-assessment made by the person who answered, on the date shown, against the grid version shown. [Renderer: carry this line in the PDF footer.]

Where the content comes from

The grids and recommendations are built from more than 30 years of strategy consulting and over 1,000 engagements, generalised so that no client or engagement can be identified. They describe what tends to be true across many businesses. Yours may be the exception, and the report cannot tell.

Questions

If something in a report reads as more than it is, tell us at contact@onestepright.com and we will fix the wording. A person replies.