A new tool
A platform accelerates the operating model beneath it, flaws included. Faster execution is still broken execution.
The KIHON framework, five stepsThe framework for commercial systems
Most commercial fixes never hold.
Key break → Inputs → Hidden cost → Order → Named owners. Turn recurring strain into a decision leadership can defend.
Why it keeps failing
Here's why the typical approach keeps failing:
A reorganisation
Moves the boxes. The handoffs nobody owns move with them, because an unowned handoff is a design decision nobody made on purpose.
Training-only programmes
Build awareness, but a behaviour the structure contradicts fades within the quarter.
A list of initiatives
Nothing on it is priced, so nothing on it can be ranked, and the one that gets funded is the one whose owner argued best.
The KIHON framework is different.
Built on evidence: one condition named, priced at your own internal rates, and sequenced by cost of inaction.
The framework
Five steps. One system.
- KKey breakLocate
- IInputsEvidence
- HHidden costConsequence
- OOrderSequence
- NNamed ownersTransfer
Five steps, run on your own records, with the people who have to act on them.
Where the framework is applied
The commercial system the five steps read.
Strategy, roles, handoffs, data and governance, and the crossings where the evidence usually sits.
- Demand
Market → Marketing
- Qualification Does it fit?
Marketing → Sales
- Progression Can it close?
Sales
- Handoff
Sales → Finance → Product → Operations → Delivery
- Onboarding
Delivery → Customer success
- Expansion
Customer success
- Criteria inherited The bar was set for an earlier stage and never reopened.
- Context does not travel What sales learned is not what delivery receives.
- Activation unowned Neither side is accountable for the first thirty days.
Inside each step
Inside each step.
Key break
Locate"Before anything is priced, the room has to agree on what is breaking."
What happens- Role-based interviews across the commercial organisation and the functions it depends on
- Symptoms read together rather than one at a time
- The disagreement in the room recorded as the first finding
- One condition named, not a list
OutcomeOne condition, named, that the evidence can be pointed at.
TimingThe opening weeks of a Diagnosis, or the Executive Workshop
Inputs
Evidence"A finding needs three forms of evidence that agree."
What happens- Qualitative: what people say about the work, recorded before it is interpreted
- Quantitative: cycle times, stage conversion, rework, turnover, from records you already keep
- Financial: the same facts in your own rates, costs and contribution
- Every claim held in an evidence register with its source and its limit
OutcomeAn evidence register where every claim can be traced to what supports it.
TimingThroughout
Hidden cost
Consequence"A condition without a figure cannot be ranked against the cost of changing it."
What happens- Six dysfunction families, five indicators, six financial-consequence components
- Valued at the company's own internal rates, never a benchmark
- A figure only where the evidence reaches one, and a stated gap where it does not
- Assumptions written down with the range they may move within
OutcomeA figure you can take into an investment decision, or an explicit gap.
TimingThe middle weeks of a Diagnosis
Order
Sequence"What changes first is a decision the evidence has to carry."
What happens- Interventions ranked by the cost of leaving them
- What deliberately waits, and why
- Review points fixed before anything changes
- A leadership briefing with the limits stated beside the conclusions
OutcomeA roadmap with a first move, not a list of recommendations.
TimingThe leadership briefing
Named owners
Transfer"A change owned by the adviser leaves when the adviser does."
What happens- One owner per intervention, inside the organisation
- Decision rights written down before the work starts
- Results read against the baseline set at diagnosis
- Capability transferred, recorded each cycle
OutcomeA system that runs, and improves, without us.
TimingOperation and Partnership
The science behind it
A research lineage, clearly attributed.
The Socio-Economic Approach to Management was created by Henri Savall and developed with Véronique Zardet and the ISEOR research team at Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3. It links economic performance with the human and organisational conditions that produce it.
Connected model Move across or tap a node to inspect it
Every term in the three axes is defined here as you inspect it.
Dysfunction families
- Working conditions
- The material circumstances of the work: space, equipment, tooling, workload and hours. In a commercial organisation it usually shows up as tooling that does not fit the motion it is asked to carry, or a workload that quietly makes quality optional.
- Work organisation
- How tasks, roles, responsibilities and decision rights are divided and connected. The common commercial form is a handoff whose content nobody defined and whose owner nobody named, so it works when people are generous and fails when they are busy.
- Communication and coordination
- How information travels between the people who need it, and whether it arrives in time to be used. It fails where what one function learned never reaches the function that has to act on it.
- Time management
- How time is planned, protected and spent, and what is allowed to interrupt it. The classic commercial version is senior time absorbed by exceptions that a defined process would have handled.
- Integrated training
- Whether people are equipped for the work they are actually asked to do, as that work changes. It fails quietly: the training happened once, and the job moved afterwards.
- Strategy implementation
- Whether the stated strategy reaches daily activity and the decisions people make without asking. A strategy that changes nothing about what anyone does on Tuesday has not been implemented, whatever the deck says.
Indicators
- Absenteeism
- Time people were scheduled to work and were not there. It is read as a health measure and is often a strain measure: the same conditions that produce rework produce absence.
- Industrial injuries
- Harm arising from the work itself. It is rare in commercial settings and is kept in the model because it is the sharpest evidence that how work is organised has a physical cost.
- Personnel turnover
- People leaving and being replaced. In a commercial team it is expensive twice: the ramp that was already paid for walks out, and the relationships walk out with it.
- Non-quality
- Work that has to be redone, corrected or apologised for. Commercially it is the deal reworked, the wrong scope sold, the onboarding restarted, the forecast revised for the third time.
- Lack of direct productivity
- Output below what the same people, tools and time could produce. It is the gap between capacity and result that nobody has named, which is why it never appears as a problem to solve.
Financial consequences
- Excess salary
- Work carried out by someone paid more than the task requires. A director resolving a scheduling conflict is paying director rates for coordination, and the payroll line looks unchanged.
- Overtime
- Hours worked beyond the planned schedule to hold the same output. It is the most visible of the six components and usually among the smallest, which is why counting only overtime understates the total.
- Overconsumption
- Goods and services bought to compensate for a dysfunction: another tool, more data, more agency hours, an extra seat. Each purchase is defensible on its own, which is exactly why the pattern is invisible.
- Non-production
- Output that did not happen because the time went somewhere else. The hours that went into rework are hours that did not go into pipeline, and nothing records the trade.
- Non-creation of potential
- Value never created because the capacity to create it was consumed elsewhere. The segment not entered, the motion not scaled, the hire not made: it is the largest component and the one no report carries.
- Risks
- Exposure the organisation is carrying rather than costing: a dependency on one person, a commitment with no record, a criterion nobody can defend if challenged. It converts into a number only when it lands, and then it lands all at once.
Inherited from the ISEOR hidden-cost model. A dysfunction in any family can surface through any indicator and land in any consequence, which is why the three are read together rather than in sequence.
The model is ISEOR's and is attributed as theirs wherever it appears. What Kihon adds is the order the five steps run in, and their application to a commercial system.
What a finding has to pass
Two gates, before anything is published.
A claim enters the register
Every line, or it does not enter
- Exists in a transcript, a document or a systemSource
- Recurs across rolesPattern
- The competing reading is statedChallenge
- Assumptions written with their rangePremise
- Where the evidence stops is recordedLimit
A figure is published
Every line, or the gap is stated instead
- Every input is an entry in the registerTrace
- Valued at your own internal ratesRate
- The range it may move within is statedRange
- Where evidence stops, the gap is statedGap
Where the framework gets used
Every engagement runs on these five steps.
What changes is how deep you go and how much we carry through with you. See all six engagements and their prices.
01
Executive Workshop
Three hours, up to eight people who can change the system, before any evidence is gathered.
You own: The shape of the problem, in writing.
€6,000flat
Credited in full against a Diagnosis commissioned within 30 days.
02
Diagnosis
Usual entry pointInterviews, the operating records you already produce, and your own internal rates.
You own: Five outputs and one decision, not a deck.
€12,000flat
Six to eight weeks from evidence access to the leadership briefing.
03
Build
Strategy, roles, handoffs, process, data, governance and operating cadence.
You own: The first commercial operating model, and the reasoning the next leader inherits.
€30,000flat
For companies selling successfully without a system anyone could hand over.
04
Operation
The scoped Diagnosis, then implementation of its roadmap inside your own system.
You own: The change implemented, and measured against its own baseline.
€55,000flat
The diagnostic is included in this price rather than added to it.
05
Partnership
Recurring diagnosis, implementation support and capability development, cycle after cycle.
You own: Capability built into your own leaders rather than rented.
€7,500per month
Six-month term. A partnership that cannot end has stopped being useful.
06
Training
Sales execution, commercial leadership, system literacy and cross-functional coordination.
You own: A standard the team can apply without us.
€8,000flat
Applies where the capability gap has already been named.
Every figure is the engagement fee. The full set, with what each one includes, sits on the services and prices page →
FAQ
The KIHON framework FAQs.
What makes KIHON different from a maturity model or a benchmark?
A maturity model compares you to other companies. This framework measures your own system against its own baseline, using your own records and your own internal rates, and publishes a figure only where the evidence reaches one.
Is this the same method ISEOR published, or a variant?
The inherited structure is ISEOR's socio-economic method: the dysfunction families, the indicators and the financial-consequence components are theirs and are attributed as theirs wherever they appear. The KIHON framework is how Kihon Labs applies that method to B2B commercial systems, and the order the five steps run in is Kihon's own.
How long until we see a result?
A Diagnosis reaches the leadership briefing in six to eight weeks from evidence access. Whether a change holds is read at the review point fixed before it starts, against the baseline set at diagnosis, not at a satisfaction survey the week after.
Who actually applies the five steps?
Kihon Labs facilitates them with selected client stakeholders from the functions and levels implicated by the diagnosis. Participation and tools are scaled to the engagement rather than imposed as a fixed enterprise-wide programme, and the last step hands the work to named owners inside your company.
Get started
See the framework on your own system.
Walk through how the five steps would map to your team, your records and your timeline.
Discuss the operating problem