Diagnosis depth.
Testing the leading explanations against alternatives and evidence, so the plan rests on facts.
A first explanation is a hypothesis, not a finding. This area is where the consultation earns its seriousness: it takes the leading explanation for the growth problem, states the alternatives honestly, and checks each one against the owner's numbers and experience.
What this area covers
- The leading explanation, stated plainly enough to be wrong
- Rival explanations, including the uncomfortable ones
- The evidence for and against each — from your numbers, not from trends
- Unknowns, flagged as unknowns: unverified integrations, unattributed spend, unreconciled figures
- What would change the diagnosis, if it turned out differently
Why it matters
Because a plan built on an untested theory is a gamble with your money and your team's time. Testing alternatives is also what makes the final recommendations trustworthy: when the report says the constraint is capacity rather than demand, it can show its work — what was examined, what was rejected, and why.
How it relates to the five steps
The discipline inside step 2, and the guard on step 3: solutions are only identified for a problem that survived testing. In the simulated consultation, this area is what rejected the weak-demand story and kept a site-specific referral risk as a genuine open question, rather than smoothing it away.