Capital makes assumptions about the organization. We verify them against the record.
The Standard defines the instrument, what counts as evidence, and how a finding is translated into economic consequence.
Financial, legal and commercial diligence establish the facts of a transaction. We address a different question: whether this organization can deliver the performance the case assumes.
We answer it from the organization's own operating record, not from industry benchmarks or from what the company says about itself.
Every assessment follows the same instrument and rules of evidence. Findings must be corroborated against the organization's operating record, translated into economic consequences, and stated with their uncertainties intact.
Engagements are taken on one side of a transaction only. The terms are settled before the work begins and are indifferent to its conclusion.
The conclusion must be supported by evidence, open to scrutiny, and relevant to the decision. Otherwise, it is opinion.
Ten variables across two domains: how the organization is designed, and what its performance depends on.
The variables are fixed, and do not change with the client, the sector, or the preference of the room.
What changes is the weighting. Permanent capital, financial buyers and strategic buyers underwrite different things, and the same variable carries different economic consequences in each context.
A standard that can be varied to suit the answer is not a standard.
The method does not collect opinions. Every level is walked through the same recent decisions and asked for sequence. What happened, in what order, who decided, what changed as a result.
Sequence is harder to manage than opinion. Anyone can present a view, but reconstructing a chronology under questioning is a different exercise.
Those accounts are then set against the operating record: what the organization generated in the ordinary course of business, before anyone knew it would be read this way.
The record was not produced for the assessment and cannot be adjusted for it.
The finding is the variance between the two.
Where the account and the record agree, the organization works as described. Where they diverge, the divergence is the finding.
A correct read of behavior depends on the method.
Execution depends on behavior.
The economics depend on execution.
Each of those links has been measured. How accurately different assessment methods predict behavior has been studied since the 1920s, across hundreds of studies and repeated meta-analysis. The relationship between measured organizational practice and productivity and profitability has been established across large samples of firms and multiple economies.
Accuracy is the only link in that chain anyone can choose. The rest is exposure.
Corroborated across sources that do not depend on each other.
Stated with a level of confidence, and the confidence is stated even when it is low.
Resolved to a number: a cost, a delay, a probability, a range.
Where the evidence does not support a confident finding, the report says so, and says what it would take to resolve it.
An organizational finding that does not resolve to a number is an observation.
Observations do not change decisions.
Nothing is accepted as true because it was announced, documented, agreed or believed.
Authority announced is not authority transferred. Governance documented is not governance exercised.
A change is established when the client's own operating record demonstrates it over a defined period, corroborated across independent sources.
Mandates do not close because the work is finished.
They close when the change certifies in the record.
An increasing share of what an organization does is executed by software rather than by people, and a growing share of what is being bought is capability that sits in systems.
The same rules apply to it.
A system's documented behavior is not its behavior. A model's intended use is not its use. An automated process is underwritten on what it does under real conditions, not on the conditions it was designed for.
This is not a separate assessment. It is the same instrument, applied to a layer diligence practice was never built to assess.
The research underpinning the method is available in full to principals, counsel and investment committees on request.
The private memorandum, which sets out the methodology, the evidence hierarchy and the economic translation, is provided under confidentiality.