Client Zero: What Happened When I Ran My Own Diagnostic on My Own Company

I built a tool to measure execution capability. Then I pointed it at myself. The results weren't what I expected.

I'm going to show you something I'm not entirely comfortable sharing.

I built the Execution Index. I designed the 36-cell Transformation Intelligence Matrix it's based on. I wrote the questions. I defined the scoring. I know, conceptually, what every number means and what every gap implies.

And then I took it myself.

That's what this article is. Not a case study of someone else's results. Not a sanitized example with the names changed. My actual scores. My actual gaps. What the diagnostic I built says about how I execute.

If you're going to trust a tool to tell you something honest about your execution, you should see what it looks like when the person who built it has to sit with his own results.

Why I Built This

I spent 20 years watching transformations fail from the inside. At PwC, I audited the systems companies put in place to manage risk and change. At Nike, at Conagra, I was inside the machine. I saw the same patterns over and over.

Not the same problems. The same patterns.

Leaders who were strong in strategy but couldn't sustain momentum past the first quarter. Leaders who got everyone aligned and then watched the gains disappear because nothing was embedded into operations. Leaders who built brilliant architectures and couldn't bring a single stakeholder along.

The pattern was always the same: strong in some phases, weak in others. And the weak phases are where the initiative died. Not because the task was hard. Because the leader's capability had a gap in exactly the wrong place.

So I built a tool to make the pattern visible. The Execution Index measures your capability across six phases of execution: Vision, Architecture, Alignment, Momentum, Reflection, and Integration. It doesn't tell you what to do. It tells you where you're strong and where you're exposed.

I was confident it worked. I'd validated the framework against hundreds of transformation failures. The TIM maps 36 specific cells where execution breaks. The diagnostic questions tie directly to those cells.

What I wasn't prepared for was what it would say about me.

What I Expected

I'll be honest: I expected to score well. Not perfectly. I'm not delusional. But I expected an overall score in the high 80s, maybe low 90s. I'm the person who built this framework. I've been thinking about execution patterns for two decades. I should have strong scores across the board.

Specifically, I expected Vision and Integration to be high. I can see end states clearly. I'm good at making things permanent, at embedding changes into how an operation actually runs. That's my background. Systems thinking. Audit. Making sure things don't just launch but stick.

I expected Momentum and Architecture to be solid. Not my strongest suits, but competent. I can sustain focus. I can design structures.

I expected Alignment to be fine. Not amazing, but fine. I've managed stakeholders my whole career.

I expected Reflection to be average. I'm more of a "build it and move on" person than a "sit with it and process" person. I knew that about myself.

So my mental model, walking in, was: strong everywhere, maybe a slight dip in Reflection. Nothing to worry about.

That's not what happened.

What I Actually Saw

80.3. Not the high-80s I expected. Not terrible. But not what the person who built the diagnostic assumed he'd score.

The top two? Integration and Vision. Both perfect 10s. I called that. I can see where we need to go and I can make the changes permanent. That's my wiring. That's 20 years of audit and operations work showing up in the data.

Momentum at 8.9. Strong. I can push through resistance. I can sustain focus when things get hard. No complaints there.

But then it drops.

Architecture at 7.4. Reflection at 6.6. And Alignment at 5.9.

5.9.

On a scale of 10, the person who built the execution diagnostic scored a 5.9 in Alignment. Let me sit with that for a second.

The Honest Moment. A 5.9 in Alignment means I'm not great at bringing people along before I move. I see the end state (10.0 Vision). I make the changes stick (10.0 Integration). But the part in the middle where you bring people into the change, where you align stakeholders, where you make sure everyone is moving in the same direction before you execute? That's my gap. And I didn't see it. Or more accurately, I didn't want to see it.

What the Gap Archetype Tells Me

The Execution Index assigns two archetypes. Your primary archetype is based on your strongest phases. Mine is Integrator. That fits. I'm the person who makes things permanent, who embeds changes into how things actually operate. I don't just launch. I make it stick.

Your gap archetype is based on the phase where you're weakest. Mine is Connector. The Connector archetype maps to Alignment. It's the person who brings others along, who builds coalitions, who makes sure everyone is oriented before the work begins.

And here's what I realized looking at this: it's obvious. It's been obvious for years. I just didn't have a number attached to it before.

I build things and then show them to people. I don't bring people into the building process. I see the vision, I design toward it, I push through, I make it permanent. And somewhere in the middle, I skip the part where I make sure everyone else sees what I see.

At PwC, that worked because the structure was there. The audit framework brought alignment by default. You didn't need to be a Connector because the process handled it.

At Unleash Epic, there's no structure to compensate. It's me. And the gap shows.

What This Means in Practice

I'll give you a specific example. I built the Transformation Intelligence Matrix. 36 cells. Six layers, six phases. Months of work. It's the intellectual core of everything Unleash Epic does.

I showed it to my first potential client. Walked them through it. 36 cells, what each one means, how they interact. It was comprehensive. It was rigorous. It was way too much.

I wasn't aligning them to the idea. I was presenting the finished product. That's a Vision + Integration play. "Here's where we're going, and here's how it works." But alignment requires something different. It requires starting where the other person is, not where you are. It requires listening to what they care about before you show them what you built.

That's the 5.9 in action. I've been doing this my whole career. Not because I don't care about other people's perspectives. I do. But my default mode is to build the thing, make it excellent, and then bring people in. The Connector does it the other way around. They bring people in and then build together.

I'm not sure I'll ever be a 10 in Alignment. That's probably not realistic. But a 5.9 means I have a system gap. I don't have a process for alignment. I have instincts for it, and instincts aren't enough.

What I'm Doing About It

I'm not going to pretend this is comfortable. Sharing your actual scores in public when you built the scoring system is a specific kind of vulnerability. But here's what I know: if I'm going to ask leaders to take this diagnostic and sit with their results, I should go first.

Here's what the 5.9 is changing for me:

1. I'm building alignment steps into my process

Before I present anything to a client or a partner, I'm adding a step: "Have I understood what they care about, or am I showing them what I built?" That's a simple question but I haven't been asking it consistently.

2. I'm starting with their language, not mine

The TIM has 36 cells. Nobody needs all 36 in the first conversation. An Alignment-first approach means starting with the three or four cells that map to their specific problem. Not my framework. Their problem.

3. I'm treating this as a system, not a personality trait

This is the whole point of the Execution Index. It's not a personality test. It's a capability map. I don't need to become a different person. I need to build a system for the phase that doesn't come naturally. The same way a leader who's weak in Momentum doesn't need to become a different kind of leader. They need a Momentum system.

The diagnostic doesn't tell you who to become. It tells you where to build a system.

Why This Matters for You

I'm sharing this for a reason beyond transparency. Here's what I want you to take from this:

Your gap is probably not where you think it is. I expected Reflection to be my lowest score. It wasn't. It was Alignment. The gap I didn't see was sitting in plain sight the whole time, showing up in every client conversation, every partnership discussion, every presentation. I just didn't have a word for it until I measured it.

High overall scores don't mean you don't have gaps. I scored an 80.3. That's strong. Two perfect 10s. And I still have a 5.9 that's actively affecting how I operate. The overall number doesn't protect you from the specific gap.

The gap is always operational. This isn't self-help. I don't need to meditate on my Alignment weakness or journal about it. I need to change how I work. Add a step to my process. Ask a question before I present. Start with their context instead of mine. It's operational. That's why the diagnostic matters.

I don't know if everybody should publish their scores. That's a personal call. But everybody should know their scores. Because the gap is there whether you measure it or not. The only question is whether you see it before it breaks something, or after.

The 80.3

I'm going to keep updating this. Not the article. The score. I'm going to retake the Execution Index in 90 days, after I've built systems around my Alignment gap. I want to see if the number moves.

I'm not trying to get to 100. I'm trying to close the distance between my strongest phase and my weakest one. Right now, that distance is 4.1 points. Integration at 10.0, Alignment at 5.9. That's a meaningful gap. It means the change I'm driving has a hole in the middle.

I built this tool because I believe execution capability is measurable, specific, and improvable. I'm not going to claim any of that if I'm not willing to prove it on myself.

So here it is. 80.3. Integrator. Gap in Alignment. Working on it.

Your turn.