Business diagnostic
Also called: business diagnosis · business assessment
A structured examination of a business — its foundation, structure, numbers and strategy — carried out before any solution is proposed, in order to find the cause of a problem rather than its symptoms.
A diagnostic is the step that comes before advice. It looks at how the business is actually built: where the money comes from and where it goes, who holds the knowledge, how work gets priced, how a customer becomes a customer, and which of those things is carrying more weight than it can hold. Only then does anyone say what should change.
The distinction that matters is between a symptom and a cause. Falling enquiries, a team that keeps turning over, a month that should have been profitable and wasn't — these are symptoms. They are what gets noticed. The cause sits further back, usually in a decision made years earlier that nobody has revisited: a price set by looking at a competitor, a role that was never defined, an offer that made sense for a different business.
This is why a diagnostic is uncomfortable to sit through and useful to have done. It does not start from what the owner thinks is wrong. It starts from what is measurable and observable, and it frequently lands somewhere other than where the owner pointed.
A diagnostic is not an audit in the accounting sense — it is not checking whether the records are correct. It is not a strategy document either; it produces the findings a strategy would be built on. And it is not a sales process wearing a clipboard: a diagnostic that always concludes with the same recommendation was not a diagnostic.
What it tells you
Where the problem actually lives — which is often not where the pain is felt. It tells you what to fix first, and just as usefully, what to leave alone.
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Business health check
A short structured review of a business across its main areas — money, customers, team, owner load and direction — used to locate where a problem sits before committing to deeper work.
Owner dependency
The degree to which a business only functions because the owner is personally in it — holding the knowledge, the relationships, the decisions, or the work itself.
Wages percentage
Total wages expressed as a percentage of revenue over the same period — the standard measure of what a business spends on people to earn what it earns.
A definition tells you what the word means. It can't tell you whether it's your problem — that takes a look at the actual business.
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