How I work · Stage 2 of 3
Design
What’s standing in the way, and what you will try first. This is where the real work hides.
These are stages, not phases. Discovery keeps running while you build, and the evidence gets collected the whole way through.
Once we know where you are and where you want to be, the gap between them is the work. Design is naming what’s actually in the gap and choosing the first moves. Not all the moves. The first ones.
Most of what fills that gap isn’t strategy or tools. It’s people who need to do something differently and aren’t, and the reasons are specific and personal. Design is where I stop treating a team as a unit and start asking who’s stuck where.
The questions in this stage
Barriers
What’s standing in the way? Gaps in profitability, skills, time, luck. Name what’s stopping you.
Barriers are never generic. Something specific is stopping specific people from doing the new thing. Name the thing and name the people, or you will design a fix for a problem nobody has.
Choices
What solutions can you come up with and what steps will you take now, next and later? What will you try first?
Now, next, later. Small and certain beats big and someday. The first move should be one you can start this week and one that tells us something either way.
How it runs
I map the barriers with you, then I map the people. For each person who has to change, I want to know where they’re stuck, how resistant they’re, and how much they move everyone else. That last one decides more than any plan does. If the most influential person in the room is the most resistant, we design for that first, or nothing else lands.
Then we choose. Not everything, and not the biggest thing. The first move that’s small enough to start and honest enough to teach us something.
The thing I always reach for here
Where it gets stuck
Every change I have helped land got stuck on one of five questions, in order. Do they know what the change is and why now? Do they know what’s in it for them? Do they know how? Do they have the room? What holds it in place after week one? Ask them top to bottom; the first one that fails is where you’re stuck, and fixing anything below it is wasted effort.
Most people skip the first two and go straight to training. That’s why most change fails. I use these five questions on everything. AI adoption in a resistant team, a checkout that won’t convert, a product launch, my own career.
Free tools that do this stage's work
The Barrier Diagnosis for a business
Score every department or team on the five questions a change has to pass, in order. The first one they score three or lower is their barrier, and it is different for each team. That is why one all-hands training never works.
Use it when a change is landing in some parts of the business and not others.
Run the diagnosisThe Barrier Diagnosis for a group of people
For when you are driving a change and the people who have to make it do not sit in one team. Name them, score each on the five questions, mark whether they are positive, neutral or negative and how much sway they hold, and get the order of conversations.
Use it when you have no authority over the people whose behaviour has to change.
Run the diagnosisThe Barrier Diagnosis for your career
Name the move you want, score yourself honestly on the five questions every change has to pass, and find the first one that fails. Add the people whose support you need and see whose conversation comes first.
Use it when you know what you want and keep not doing it.
Run the diagnosisGoals and measures
A goal without a measure is a mood. Set what you are going for across three timeframes, how you will know it happened, and by when. Works for a career, a team or a life.
Use it when you have goals written down that nobody could tell you had been hit.
Open the toolThe development plan
A choices exercise, not a wish list. Bring in your competency scores and your goals, pick the two or three that are actually blocking you, and set the measure, the named people, the real steps and where each sits in the sequence of now, next and later.
Use it for yourself, or with someone you are developing.
Open the toolThe Business Map
The whole business on one page. Vision and purpose, who you serve and what you promise them, what you run on, what you are honestly weak at, the goals, the horizons, and the three things this quarter with a name against each. Built to print at A3 and hang where the team sees it.
Use it when everyone could tell you what they are doing this week and nobody could tell you why.
Build my Business MapThe Life Map
Everything on one page. Your vision and purpose, your values, your strengths and watch-outs, what you want to feel, your goals, what is ahead in one, three and five years, and what you are actually doing this quarter. Built to print and put on the wall.
Use it as the thing all the other tools build toward. It fills itself in from what you have already done.
Build my Life MapThe Life and Career Workbook
The whole workbook, all three stages. Discovery is the Life or Career Diagnosis. Design is the gaps, what to measure, the vision and the first moves. Build is the weekly commitment log. Nothing gated, nothing sent anywhere.
Use it if you feel stuck and want a proper reckoning before your next move.
Open the workbook