DIAGNΩN — from διαγνωστικόν, diagnōstikón, what pertains to telling apart; διαγιγνώσκω is to know one thing from another, and a διαγνώμων is the one who discerns and so decides. The tool tells apart: fact from judgement, essence from accident, what must not change from what cannot — and it stops at the question, because a question told apart is the only thing an answer can be built on.

A strategic issue is the synopsis of clarifications regarding the strategic entity, its predeterminations, its scope and its problem. It is written before a strategy workshop, and it calibrates everything that follows: what may be changed, what may not, whose satisfaction counts, and what exactly is wrong.

Most strategy work fails here rather than later. A problem that is not defined lets the answer be adjusted to whatever was achieved; a problem that mixes facts with judgements cannot be argued about; a problem that already contains its solution has stopped being a problem.

Where this sits

Strategy runs in four phases: clarification, formation, transformation, operation. This tool belongs to the first and must be finished before the second begins. An answer formed without its question is an answer to nothing, however impressive the number.

In practice the issue is collective pre-work: the team writes it, shares it and agrees it before the strategy workshop. The workshop then forms a direction against it, and every later step — stakeholders, key success factors, position, options — is calibrated by what stands here.

How it is used

This tool composes the issue in bullet form. That is deliberate: bullets can be written at the speed of a room, argued line by line and rearranged without rewriting. An issue that has to be drafted as prose while eight people watch does not get drafted.

So it works live — in the session where the issue is identified, on a screen everyone can see. The gates argue back while the discussion runs: a judgement smuggled into the situation, a problem with no complication behind it, a complication nobody picked up.

The full document is written afterwards, from these bullets. Export text writes the whole issue as one file in the structure above; give that to a language model and ask for the prose, and what comes back elaborates an argument that was already made — not one the machine invented.

The traffic runs both ways. A model is a good source of candidates for the diagnosis: sector facts, pressures, what comparable entities suffer from. Paste a block of them into any list and each line becomes its own point. What the tool does then is what no model can do for you — make each one be accepted or rejected, carry its evidence, and be derived from what stands above it.

The quality of a problem

A problem can be true and still be worth little. A weak cost position is a problem the entity alone has: the customer buys elsewhere, the investor invests elsewhere, the employee works elsewhere. Nobody outside is moved by it, so nothing outside moves.

One level up, the problem belongs to the species the entity is part of — circularity for the chemical industry. Now everyone who depends on that industry is interested: its customers, its investors, its people. One level up again, it is what the species addresses on behalf of others — what human existence does to the planet, of which circularity is one part. That problem carries an interest far beyond the sector.

The tool asks the level of every problem statement, because the level decides how much of the world can be recruited to the answer.

What it is for

• The near end — a strategic issue a management team can sign: every statement verifiable, every complication answered, no solution smuggled in.
• The end — a strategy calibrated by a real problem, so that consequence is possible.
• What it cannot do for you — decide whether a complication is uncomfortable enough to be named. That is judgement, and it stays with the people in the room.

Why it works

• Separation before synthesis — situation and complication are kept apart, so the unproblematic can be agreed without agitation and the problematic can be stated without varnish.
• Synthesis without new facts — the problem is derived, not asserted; every problem statement is linked to what stands above it.
• Scope before diagnosis — what may be transformed and what must be retained is settled first, so the diagnosis cannot quietly widen the mandate.

Two ways to use it

As a working tool, in the hands of a trained strategist — the senior strategist of the entity, say — who knows the method and drives it alone or with a small team.

Or, and this is where it is worth most, in a workshop moderated by such a specialist, or by us. Because the tool runs online, that workshop works over a collaboration platform (e.g. Teams®) as well as it does in a room.

The operating steps of each page stand on the page itself, under What this does and how to use it — what the page produces, in how many steps, and the rule that governs it. What follows here is what those pages cannot say for themselves.

Why the situation must be value-neutral

• A judgement in the situation cannot be agreed to without conceding the complication as well. Facts can be accepted by people who disagree about everything else — that is what makes them the ground of the argument.
• If you find yourself writing outdated, insufficient or inadequate, replace the word with the measurable fact that produced the judgement, and put the judgement where it belongs.

Why the problem may carry no new information

• The problem is a synthesis of situation and complication. A problem containing a fact that appears nowhere above it is an assertion, and an assertion can be withdrawn later without anybody noticing.
• This is also what makes retrograde adjustment visible: if the problem is linked, it cannot be quietly re-cut to fit whatever was achieved.

Why essence is settled before diagnosis

• Excluding a defining attribute from the essence invites harmful change; including a contingent one prevents necessary change. Both errors are made silently, and both are expensive.
• The essence also fixes the peer set: whoever shares it is a peer, and only against peers does a position mean anything.

Why seven is the limit

• A section of more than seven points is not a diagnosis but an inventory. The discipline of seven forces the abstraction that makes a problem addressable.

Why not simply a problem statement

A problem statement alone carries no mandate. Without scope it cannot be bounded, without predeterminations it cannot be answered honestly, and without criteria nobody can say whether an answer would be good. The six parts — subject, task, content, area, criteria, diagnosis — are what make an issue a mandate.

How the parts fit together

• Scope names the entity and what is inside the boundary.
• Preconditions divide what must not change (endogenic predeterminations) from what cannot change (exogenic limitations), and record what is not yet known.
• Essence divides the immutable from the mutable, and thereby names the sector, the peers and the room for transformation.
• Criteria name the business-model attributes in scope and the stakeholder groups whose satisfaction decides success.
• Diagnosis holds situation and complication apart.
• Problem synthesises them, and nothing else.

Where this tool stops

It clarifies the issue. It does not analyse stakeholders, derive key success factors, position the entity or develop options — those follow, with other instruments, and they need the issue to be settled first.