# The diagnostic

> A two to four week diagnostic for CEOs: the portfolio audit, the customer economics and the organizational lines that show where the business is leaving...

Updated: 2026-10-09 · Author: Alan Wizemann

Two to four weeks to find out where the money is: what the stalled and duplicated portfolio is actually worth, which assets the company owns but has never connected, and where the organization is measuring the wrong thing and calling it performance. You get your own number, from your own business, and the first place to prove it.

## Who it is for

- CEOs who know performance is below potential and want the cause, not a benchmark

- Boards and investors who want an operator's read before a larger commitment

- Executive teams about to fund another transformation program

## 1. Portfolio and spend (Week one)

Every active project, its owner, its spend and what it was supposed to produce, laid out in one place for the first time, which is usually enough for the duplicates and the projects that never end to surface on their own.

Deliverable: The portfolio map and the first estimate of what it is worth.

## 2. Customer and product economics (Week two)

Acquisition, retention, contribution and payback by segment and product, then the harder question of which of those metrics the teams actually own and whether the people measured on them can control them.

Deliverable: The economics the business actually runs on, in one page.

## 3. The organization as it operates (Weeks two to three)

Interviews across functions to draw the lines of work between the boxes on the org chart, where the tension and the delay live, and who could own each line if the company let them.

Deliverable: The domain architecture the company already has, drawn.

## 4. The number and the first card (Week four)

Everything combined into one read for the CEO: the number, the first domain, the first piece of work and what it would take to prove it, with a decision to make at the end rather than a roadmap.

Deliverable: The diagnostic read and a decision to make.

## What we look at

How projects are created, funded and tracked, which parts of the company are always involved beyond the owner, and what people say always gets in the way when you ask them plainly. The customer economics the business runs on, whether anyone owns them, and whether the teams measured on them can actually move them. Where the same line of work keeps crossing the org chart with no owner on either side, because that is usually where the money is.

## What you get

A number: what the stalled and duplicated portfolio is costing, what the unconnected assets could produce, and the first domain and the first piece of work to prove it on. A short written read for the CEO and, if wanted, the Board, with the read-ahead documents behind the operating model following the first conversation.

## How it is priced

Like a small project, and it is the only engagement you have to say yes to first, because everything else follows from what it finds.

## Proof

- Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits: Identified first-year savings, $40MM+ (Projected savings from the portfolio audit and SAFe restructuring (~$21MM, ~$16MM and ~$4MM in three passes); $40MM was the shared CDO and CIO key result. Gross, before the cost of the new internal teams.)

- Munchkin: Customer LTV baseline uncovered, $48.28, 88% one-time buyers (26-month analysis in the April 2023 board deck: 37 weeks between orders, 4% of customers buying three or more times.)

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Canonical: https://alanwizemann.com/services/diagnostic