Diagnostics & Kickoff Toolkit — Interview Scripts, Baselines, and Kickoff Agenda

Diagnostics & Kickoff Toolkit — Interview Scripts and Baseline Checks

This practical starter kit helps teams run a rapid, evidence‑based diagnostic and launch a focused 90‑day improvement journey. Use the templates and scripts to collect consistent evidence, align stakeholders, and prioritize a small set of experiments you can learn from quickly.

What’s included

• Stakeholder map template (roles, influence, data owners, engagement approach)
• 12‑question executive interview script with intent and suggested follow‑ups
• Team workspace checklist (repos, dashboards, meeting cadences, decision records)
• Baseline metric capture sheet (table you can copy) with example metrics
• Evidence collection standards and minimal artifacts for a short diagnostic report
• Prioritization rubric (impact / effort / confidence) and recommended scoring
• Suggested two‑hour kickoff agenda and a 90‑day cadence template

How to use this toolkit (quick workflow)

1. Prepare: Fill the stakeholder map and collect accessible artifacts (dashboards, repo links, meeting notes).
2. Interview: Run the executive interview and 1–2 representative team interviews using the scripts. Capture answers verbatim when possible.
3. Capture baselines: Fill the metric sheet from authoritative sources (dashboards, logs, invoices).
4. Synthesize: Produce a 2–3 page diagnostic report with clear observations and up to three candidate experiments.
5. Prioritize: Score candidate experiments using the rubric and agree on owners and measurable success criteria.
6. Kickoff: Run the two‑hour kickoff to align stakeholders, confirm experiments, and schedule the first sprint of work.

Stakeholder map template

Copy the table and add rows for sponsors, data owners, process leads, IT, and any critical external stakeholders.

Executive interview — 12 questions (script + intent + suggested follow‑ups)

1. What outcome would make a 90‑day effort clearly successful to you? (Intent: capture the sponsor’s main success criteria.)
2. What are the top 2–3 problems keeping the organization from that outcome today? (Follow‑up: examples, frequency.)
3. Which metrics do you watch most closely related to this area? How confident are you in those numbers? (Intent: discover data sources and confidence.)
4. Who owns the underlying data and dashboards? Are there known gaps or reliability issues?
5. What recent attempts have you made to address these problems? What worked and what didn’t?
6. Where do you see process bottlenecks or decision delays? (Follow‑up: typical lead times.)
7. What constraints (people, budget, systems, policy) would limit experiments in the next 90 days?
8. Who must be closely involved to make change stick? Who could block it?
9. How do you prefer to receive updates and decisions during the 90 days? (cadence, format)
10. What are acceptable trade‑offs (speed vs. accuracy, cost vs. coverage) for this work?
11. If we could prove one small experiment that moves the needle, what would you like it to show?
12. Are there long‑lead dependencies we must avoid starting without securing first?

During interviews, capture direct quotes and links to any artifacts mentioned. Ask for examples or screenshots when the interviewee refers to a metric or issue.

Team workspace checklist (quick audit)

• Code/knowledge repositories: canonical locations and owners (link)
• Dashboards and metric sources: primary dashboards, update frequency, and owners
• Meeting cadences: leadership, tactical, and retrospective schedules
• Decision logs: existence and format (where are decisions recorded?)
• Roles and RACI for key processes
• Incident and improvement backlog: where outstanding issues are tracked
• Access and permissions: who can see/edit core data and dashboards

Baseline metric capture sheet (copyable table)

Suggested sample metrics to consider: lead time, throughput, defect/return rate, mean time to resolve, customer satisfaction (NPS), on‑time delivery, backlog size. Choose a small set (3–7) that map to sponsor outcomes.

Evidence collection standards (minimal guidance)

• Prefer authoritative sources: dashboard links, raw exports (CSV), incident logs, meeting minutes with timestamps.
• Capture date ranges: prefer last 30 and last 90 days where feasible.
• Record who provided the artifact and when (to track reliability).
• An observation without a link or export is a hypothesis — label it accordingly.
• When data is sensitive, document how it was anonymized or aggregated.

Minimal diagnostic report (deliverable)

1. Executive summary (2 paragraphs): baseline snapshot and recommended focus.
2. Baseline metrics table (as above) with sources and confidence level.
3. Top observations and root causes (evidence‑linked).
4. Proposed experiments (max 3) with owner, success criteria, estimated effort, and risks.
5. Recommended next steps and a 90‑day cadence (meetings, checkpoints).

Prioritization rubric (simple score)

Score each candidate experiment 1–5 on three dimensions: Impact, Effort (inverse), and Confidence. Multiply (Impact × Confidence) / Effort to get a prioritization score. Prefer experiments with clear measurements and owners.

Suggested two‑hour kickoff agenda

1. Welcome, purpose, and constraints (10 min)
2. Baseline snapshot: 10‑minute walkthrough of key metrics and evidence
3. Top observations and proposed experiments (30 min)
4. Prioritization and selection of experiments (30 min)
5. Roles, owners, and immediate 2‑week actions (20 min)
6. Cadence: reporting, decision checkpoints, risk flags (10 min)
7. Close: commitments and next meeting (10 min)

Deliverables & artifacts to produce

• Completed stakeholder map
• Interview notes and linked artifacts
• Baseline metric table with evidence links
• 2–3 page diagnostic report and prioritized experiment list
• Kickoff meeting notes with owners and schedule

Platform and capability suggestions

To make this toolkit operational on the platform, convert the baseline metric sheet and interview form into InteractiveForms (so teams can submit and store responses). Use the content submission capability to save artifacts and create a running audit trail. Consider packaging these templates into an ownable domain so individual sites can copy, tailor, and version the toolkit for their context.

If you want, start by copying this toolkit into your site, then create an Interactive baseline form and an interview submission form so every diagnostic produces structured, searchable evidence.