← Back to the questions Choose a situation that sounds familiar
“We keep hiring, but the backlog keeps growing.” “We’re being told we need new systems. What actually needs to change?” “Every team has an improvement project. Which should come first?”
More situations “Sales blames operations. Operations blames finance.” “Everything is urgent.” “We fix the same problems. They keep coming back.”
An illustrative situation
We keep hiring, but the backlog keeps growing. Choose a stage to explore what Cohentia would examine.
Visible Cause Effects Decision
Visible The symptoms you are living with Cause What may be driving them Effects Where the cost is landing Decision What to change, and what to protect Read more examples of what the Diagnostic examines We keep hiring, but the backlog keeps growing. Visible Headcount is increasing, but unfinished work is accumulating faster. Another recruitment request is on the table.
What Cohentia examines: We map backlog records, returned work and the approvals each item waits for.
Cause Cohentia examines whether work repeatedly returns for correction, or waits for a scarce approval regardless of team size.
What Cohentia examines: We separate processing, waiting and rework to locate the actual constraint.
Effects If this is happening, more work enters the same bottleneck. Longer queues generate chasing, expediting and further interruption.
What Cohentia examines: We trace queues into chasing, interruptions and further unfinished work.
Decision Separate processing time, waiting and rework: address the constraint before adding more capacity.
What Cohentia examines: We compare removing the constraint with adding more people.
Discuss this situation → We’re being told we need new systems. What actually needs to change? Visible Several systems are causing frustration. A broad replacement programme is proposed, without a clear view of which changes would release the most value.
What Cohentia examines: We map system failures, shared information and handoffs across the operation.
Cause Cohentia examines whether several visible failures originate in a smaller number of shared information, ownership or workflow gaps.
What Cohentia examines: We test whether apparently separate failures have a smaller set of common causes.
Effects If this is happening, multiple replacement projects compete for the same people and reproduce unresolved dependencies.
What Cohentia examines: We trace overlapping replacements into competing demand and unresolved dependencies.
Decision Map which failures share a cause: choose a targeted first intervention and sequence any necessary replacements.
What Cohentia examines: We choose a targeted first intervention and sequence any necessary replacements.
Discuss this situation → Every team has an improvement project. Which should come first? Visible Every team has a plausible improvement plan. The business cannot fund or absorb them all, and their dependencies are unclear.
What Cohentia examines: We map improvement proposals, intended outcomes and demands on shared people.
Cause Cohentia examines whether projects overlap, depend on unfinished work or improve local measures without addressing the overall result.
What Cohentia examines: We compare project overlap, prerequisites and contribution to the overall result.
Effects If this is happening, teams face competing changes. Benefits cancel out or fail to materialise, prompting further initiatives.
What Cohentia examines: We trace competing changes into delivery load and benefits that may cancel out.
Decision Connect initiatives to outcomes and dependencies: stop duplication, combine related work and agree an achievable sequence.
What Cohentia examines: We compare stopping, combining and sequencing initiatives against available capacity.
Discuss this situation → Sales blames operations. Operations blames finance. Visible Sales, operations and finance disagree about where work breaks down. Each function has a different explanation and a different proposed fix.
What Cohentia examines: We map a piece of work as it passes through sales, operations and finance.
Cause Cohentia examines whether each function works to different targets and passes work on without shared completion criteria.
What Cohentia examines: We compare local targets and handoff criteria with the outcome the business needs.
Effects If this is happening, teams optimise their own results while shifting effort downstream. Disputes create more checking and delay.
What Cohentia examines: We trace shifted work into checking, disputes and downstream delay.
Decision Trace a piece of work across functions: agree shared outcomes, handoff requirements and responsibility for the whole result.
What Cohentia examines: We establish shared completion criteria and responsibility across the full workflow.
Discuss this situation → Everything is urgent. Visible Everything arrives as urgent. The order of work keeps changing, and there is little room to finish the changes that might reduce the pressure.
What Cohentia examines: We map incoming requests, current commitments and the channels that set priorities.
Cause Cohentia examines whether work enters through multiple channels, with no shared capacity view or authority to decline or defer requests.
What Cohentia examines: We check who can accept, defer or decline work against available capacity.
Effects If this is happening, priorities change continually. Interrupted work takes longer, causing more requests to become urgent.
What Cohentia examines: We trace interruptions and reprioritisation into longer completion times.
Decision Establish demand, capacity and competing commitments: define intake, priority rules and who can make trade-offs.
What Cohentia examines: We define intake and priority rules with clear authority to make trade-offs.
Discuss this situation → We fix the same problems. They keep coming back. Visible The same incidents keep returning. Fixing them consumes the time that might otherwise go into preventing them.
What Cohentia examines: We map recurring incidents, previous fixes and the conditions in which problems return.
Cause Cohentia examines whether incidents are closed without addressing the conditions that recreate them, often across team boundaries.
What Cohentia examines: We test whether fixes remove the cause or only close the immediate incident.
Effects If this is happening, recurring fixes consume the time needed for prevention. The business becomes dependent on firefighting.
What Cohentia examines: We trace recurring rescue work into the capacity lost for prevention.
Decision Connect recurring incidents to shared causes: select a structural fix and assign responsibility beyond the immediate symptom.
What Cohentia examines: We select a structural intervention and give it ownership across team boundaries.
Discuss this situation → What you leave with
A clear basis for your next move. Findings, root causes, a prioritised roadmap and a clear recommendation. Your team keeps a self-check it can run again without bringing a consultant back.
See how the Diagnostic works → Can our current operation deliver our objectives?↗ The change went live. Why hasn’t the value followed?↗ What should we resolve before implementation?↗ 