Worksheet: Write the diagnosis first

A strategy that skips the diagnosis answers a question nobody asked. This sheet narrows a long list of worries to the two or three that decide the business's future. It builds the Competent step of the check:

A written diagnosis names the two or three issues that actually determine the business's future.

Step 1. List the candidates

Write down up to ten issues. Take them from the last year's board papers, lost customers, the margin trend and the plan the business keeps missing.

Step 2. Test each one

Issue	Evidence (a number or an event)	Where it leads in five years if nothing changes	Can an operational fix solve it?	Keep?
e.g. Our main channel is moving online and we have no online offer	Online share of the category has doubled in three years	Revenue through that channel halves	No	Yes

Keep the issues where the five-year view hurts and an operational fix will not close the gap. Drop the ones that are really tasks.

Step 3. Write it

Write the diagnosis in 150 words or fewer. Name two or three issues. Give each its evidence and its five-year consequence.

Step 4. Read it aloud to a sceptic

Pick someone outside the leadership team: a non-executive director, a lender, a former colleague. Read the diagnosis aloud.

Sceptic	Date	What they challenged	Changed the text?

If an issue got softer after the reading, put the harder version back.

Done when: a written diagnosis names two or three issues with their evidence, and it has survived a reading to a sceptic.

Adapted from our own strategy ghost deck (Forty 2, 2025).