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Selling capacity and expertise makes two dysfunctions hard to tell apart.

Advisory and services firms sell the time and judgment of the people doing the work, which means commercial dysfunction and delivery dysfunction sit closer together here than in almost any other sector, and often get diagnosed as the same problem when they are not. BPO operations selling delivery capacity at larger scale carry the same tension.

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Typical surface

Where the dysfunction usually shows up first.

Capacity, project work, and new business tend to pull against each other here. Three places worth looking closer.

Capacity is the product, and it is always double-booked

Every billable hour sold is an hour that cannot also be spent finding the next client, so the same calendar carries both this quarter's delivery and next quarter's pipeline, and one of them always loses.

Project revenue and retainer revenue behave differently

A one-off project ends and has to be replaced, while a retainer renews quietly in the background, and treating them as the same kind of revenue in the same forecast hides which one is actually shrinking.

New-business winning becomes its own delivery job

Proposals, pitches, and relationship-building consume senior time the same way a client engagement does, but rarely get costed the same way, so the real price of winning the next deal stays invisible.

What it looks for here

Separate selling capacity from delivery capacity.

The dysfunction families do not change for advisory and services firms, and the diagnostic does not decide in advance whether the loss sits in selling, staffing, or delivery. It reads the commercial and delivery systems together where they overlap, so a fix aimed at the wrong constraint does not get funded by mistake.

Interviews typically include partners or principals, delivery leads, and whoever tracks utilisation, since the tension between billable work and business development concentrates in how their calendars actually get built. Utilisation reports, project-versus-retainer revenue splits, and new-business pipeline activity are compared to see which one is quietly losing the argument.

The sector is the surface, the six dysfunction families are the constant underneath A neutral band at the top, labelled for this sector, represents the visible surface. An arrow points down to a highlighted band holding the six dysfunction families the method reads: working conditions, work organisation, communication, time management, integrated training, and strategy implementation. The surface changes from sector to sector, the six families underneath do not, and none is drawn larger or heavier than another. Advisory & Services the visible surface the diagnostic reads past it the same six dysfunction families Working conditions Work organisation Communication Time management Integrated training Strategy implementation constant in every sector
The sector is the surface, the six dysfunction families are the constant underneath A neutral band at the top represents this sector's visible surface. An arrow points down to a highlighted band holding the six dysfunction families the method reads. The surface changes by sector, the six families underneath do not, and none is drawn larger than another. Advisory & Services the visible surface the same six dysfunction families Working conditions Work organisation Communication Time management Integrated training Strategy implementation
FAQ

Before you assume it is a delivery problem.

How do you tell a commercial problem apart from a delivery problem here?
The interviews and pipeline data usually make the split visible: a commercial dysfunction shows up before the engagement starts, a delivery dysfunction shows up after. Where the two are genuinely tangled, the diagnostic says so rather than forcing a clean line.
Our partners are also our top sellers, does interviewing them disrupt billable time?
Interviews are scheduled around billable commitments and kept to what is needed, and the return is a system that stops quietly consuming more of that senior time than it should.
We run a mix of one-off projects and retainers, does the diagnostic treat them differently?
Yes. Project revenue and retainer revenue behave differently and get read separately, since blending them into one pipeline number is often exactly where the picture goes fuzzy.
Is this useful for a firm with only a handful of partners?
Yes, size is not the determining factor. A small partnership can carry the same coordination and boundary problems as a larger one, just concentrated in fewer people.
Where to go next

Three ways to keep going.

See what gets measured

The six families, the signals that reveal them, and how each one turns into cost.

Explore the Diagnosis →

Read where the method comes from

Fifty years of intervention research, and the four stage process behind every engagement.

Read the methodology →

Find out where you sit

Ten questions, two minutes. A first read on which part of your system is carrying the most strain.

Take the Strain Check →

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Commercial and delivery dysfunction blur together. A number tells them apart.

One call, 30 minutes. We will review what is working, what is stalling, and where the cost is actually sitting. You will leave with a concrete next step, whether that is Kihon Labs or not.

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