26Point Checklist

The framework · Business Operations

18 Culture & Organisational Health

11 sub-categories. The three numbers on each are the typical opportunity in that area across businesses — not your result.

Time5.6/10Financial6.2/10Automation3.5/10

These three numbers are researched cross-business benchmarks for the area — the typical opportunity available in it. They are not your score, not a forecast, and not a promise. What is actually critical depends on your business, which is what the audit is for.

18.1

Values in practice

Time4/10Financial5/10Automation2/10
What this is
Whether the stated values describe how the business actually behaves under pressure.
Why it matters
Values that are contradicted by decisions are worse than no values — they teach the team that stated commitments are decorative.
You have a problem here if
A recent decision plainly contradicted a value on the wall and nobody mentioned it.
What to automate
Two out of ten. There is no product for this. The only mechanism that works is leaders visibly making a costly decision consistent with the value, and saying why.
18.2

Behaviour standards

Time5/10Financial6/10Automation3/10
What this is
The behaviour that is expected, tolerated and refused.
Why it matters
The standard is set by the worst behaviour leadership accepts, not by the one it announces. Everyone in the business knows which is which.
You have a problem here if
A high performer behaves in a way others would be pulled up for.
What to automate
Three out of ten. Document the standard and make it part of induction; the enforcement is a management act.
18.3

Trust

Time5/10Financial6/10Automation2/10
What this is
Whether people trust leadership and each other enough to work without defensive overhead.
Why it matters
Low trust is a hidden tax on everything — more checking, more meetings, more cc'd emails, slower decisions.
You have a problem here if
People copy their manager into routine correspondence to protect themselves.
What to automate
Two out of ten, the lowest in the framework alongside purpose. Trust is built by consistency between what is said and what is done. No system produces it, and surveillance tooling actively destroys it.
18.4

Accountability

Time6/10Financial7/10Automation3/10
What this is
Whether people take ownership of outcomes rather than of tasks.
Why it matters
Task accountability produces work that is technically complete and practically useless. Outcome accountability is what makes a small team effective.
You have a problem here if
People report that their part is done while the overall thing has not happened.
What to automate
Three out of ten. Assign outcomes rather than activities and make the outcome visible. Software can show the outcome; it cannot make someone own it.
18.5

Communication

Time7/10Financial6/10Automation6/10
What this is
Whether information moves across the team as well as down it.
Why it matters
Poor internal communication produces duplicated work and decisions made without context — both expensive and both usually invisible to leadership.
You have a problem here if
Two people discover they have been working on the same thing.
What to automate
The most automatable line in this category, at six. Shared visibility of work in progress, a single channel per topic and searchable history remove a real share of communication failures.
18.6

Collaboration

Time7/10Financial6/10Automation5/10
What this is
How well people work across roles and functions.
Why it matters
Most operational failures happen at the joins between roles. Collaboration quality determines how expensive those joins are.
You have a problem here if
Hand-offs between functions routinely lose information or time.
What to automate
Moderate. Shared workflow tooling removes the mechanical friction at hand-offs; the willingness to help someone else's work succeed is cultural.
18.7

Ownership

Time5/10Financial7/10Automation3/10
What this is
Whether people act on problems they see, including ones outside their remit.
Why it matters
Ownership is what makes a business self-correcting. Its absence means every problem waits for a manager to notice it.
You have a problem here if
Known problems persist because they were nobody's job.
What to automate
Three out of ten. Make it easy and safe to raise something and visibly act on what is raised. The tooling is trivial; whether raising things is rewarded or punished is the actual variable.
18.8

Engagement

Time6/10Financial7/10Automation5/10
What this is
Whether people are invested in the work or serving out the day.
Why it matters
Engagement shows up in discretionary effort — the small extra judgement that separates adequate delivery from excellent. It cannot be instructed.
You have a problem here if
Work is done exactly to spec and no further, consistently.
What to automate
Automate the measurement lightly — short, regular, anonymous, and only if you will act on it. An engagement survey that produces no visible change reduces engagement.
18.9

Conflict management

Time6/10Financial5/10Automation4/10
What this is
How disagreement is handled — surfaced and resolved, or avoided until it festers.
Why it matters
Unresolved conflict consumes attention and eventually costs people. Avoidance is more expensive than the argument would have been.
You have a problem here if
Two people or teams have stopped dealing with each other directly.
What to automate
Four out of ten and mostly administrative — a clear escalation path and a record. Resolution is a conversation someone has to have.
18.10

Psychological safety

Time5/10Financial6/10Automation3/10
What this is
Whether people can raise problems, admit mistakes and disagree without cost.
Why it matters
Without it, you find out about problems late and expensively. Every quality and safety system depends on people being willing to report bad news.
You have a problem here if
Mistakes are discovered rather than reported.
What to automate
Three out of ten. Anonymous channels help at the margin. What determines it is what visibly happens to the first person who brings bad news.
18.11

Internal alignment

Time6/10Financial7/10Automation3/10
What this is
Whether the whole business is pulling in the same direction.
Why it matters
Misalignment wastes effort at full speed. It is more expensive than under-performance because the work still costs the same.
You have a problem here if
Two teams are optimising for measures that work against each other.
What to automate
Three out of ten. Check the incentives before the culture — most apparent misalignment is people responding rationally to conflicting measures. That part is fixable by design.

Category totals

Time 62/110 · Financial 68/110 · Automation 39/110. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.