The 4D Diagnostic Checklist

Score each statement: 2 = clearly true, 1 = partly true, 0 = not true / don't know. Be harsh — the value is in the zeros. Company:   Date:

D1 — Diagnose: do you know what's actually constraining you?

• We can name our single binding constraint on growth, and the leadership team would name the same one.
• We know our unit economics (CAC, LTV, contribution margin) from data less than 90 days old.
• We know customer-level profitability — which customers make us money and which cost us money.
• We have retention/repeat-purchase curves by cohort, not just an average churn number.
• We've spoken to at least five customers in the last quarter about why they buy, stay, or leave.
• We know why we lose: the top three reasons prospects choose a competitor or choose nothing.
• Our beliefs about the market have been tested against data in the last 12 months.
• We can separate what's a demand problem from what's a conversion problem in our funnel.
• We know which of our activities would look indefensible if a skeptical outsider audited them.
• Our founder's diagnosis and our data's diagnosis currently agree.

D2 — Decide: have you actually made choices?

• We can state our target customer specifically enough that it excludes most possible customers.
• We can state, in one sentence, why that customer should choose us over their real alternatives.
• We have a written stop-doing list — things we deliberately no longer pursue.
• We have declined revenue in the last six months because it was out of strategy.
• Our pricing reflects a deliberate choice, reviewed within the last year — not history plus drift.
• We know which opportunities we are explicitly saying "not yet" to, and why.
• The leadership team could each write our strategy in three sentences and roughly match.
• Our strategic choices are recorded — what we chose, what we rejected, and why.
• If we doubled marketing spend tomorrow, we know exactly where it would go and why there.
• Our biggest current bet was chosen against alternatives, not by default or momentum.

D3 — Design: does the strategy exist as a usable plan?

• Our strategy fits on one page, and that page exists.
• We have a current 90-day roadmap with five to eight initiatives, not twenty.
• Every initiative has a single named owner — a person, not a department.
• Every initiative has a definition of done and a metric that will move if it works.
• Initiatives are sequenced by dependency — foundations before amplifiers.
• We have a metric tree: the five to seven numbers that tell us if the strategy is working.
• We've identified where AI/automation changes the economics of our key workflows.
• The roadmap fits our actual capacity — we cut scope rather than pretend.
• Someone outside leadership could read the one-pager and know what to prioritize.
• The plan names its riskiest assumption and tests it early, not last.

D4 — Drive: is there a rhythm that keeps it alive?

• We hold a weekly leadership cadence that reviews the roadmap — and it actually happens.
• Our key metrics are visible without anyone building a report by hand.
• Initiative owners report progress in a consistent format: on track, blocked, decision needed.
• Blockers surface within a week, not at the quarterly review.
• We have killed or consciously re-scoped an initiative in the last quarter (vs. silent slippage).
• Strategic priorities survive contact with urgent weeks — the cadence has never skipped twice in a row.
• New opportunities get tested against the one-pager before entering the roadmap.
• We run 30/60/90-day checkpoints comparing results against the plan's assumptions.
• The team could run the cadence without the founder in the room.
• Looking back 90 days, most of what we said we'd do, we did — or consciously chose not to.

Scoring

Total (max 80)	Reading
60–80	You have a real strategy system. Sharpen the weakest D.
35–59	Typical for a growing founder-led company: pockets of discipline, gaps that compound. Start with your lowest-scoring D — in sequence order (D1 before D2, etc.).
0–34	You're running on momentum and instinct. That worked to get here; it won't get you through the next inflection. Begin at Diagnose.

Pattern worth knowing: most companies score highest on D3 (plans are easy to write) and lowest on D2 and D4 (choices and cadence are hard to live). The zeros in D2 are usually worth the most money.