Tools you can run yourself.

These are working instruments, not marketing collateral. Each one started life inside an engagement — the questions that open a diagnostic, the primer used to scope a first improvement project — and has been stripped of anything client-specific so you can run it yourself. They will not replace an embedded operating partner, and they are not meant to. They are meant to give you an honest first read on where your operation stands.

Who do they help? Founders and operators of companies that have outgrown improvisation, and the people who report to them — a chief of staff, a quality lead, an operations manager asked to take a first look at the model. You do not need a Lean Six Sigma background. The questions are plain, the scoring is simple, and the point throughout is to find the few places where the operating model is exposed, not to produce a grade.

The sections below explain how to apply each tool and what to read first, so the download is the start of something useful rather than another file in a folder. If what they surface is a problem you can fix internally, fix it. If it is the kind of problem that needs an operating partner, the diagnostic is the next step.

How to use the Operations Audit Checklist

Answer it with evidence, not impressions. The temptation is to score from memory; the value comes from checking. Where it asks who owns a process, find a recent decision and see whether ownership was actually clear. Where it asks about quality, look at the real first-pass numbers, not the final pass rate. Score honestly, even where it stings, then sort by your weakest area rather than your loudest one. The output is not a grade — it is a shortlist of the few places where the operating model is exposed, and where your attention will pay back most over the next quarter.

How to use the Lean Six Sigma Quick-Start

Pick one process that matters and is measurable, and resist the urge to fix everything at once. Measure how it runs today — cycle time, rework, and the share of steps that add value — before you change anything, so you have a baseline to argue from. Then change one thing and keep a control, so any gain is attributable rather than assumed. The quick-start treats Lean and Six Sigma as engineering tools, not a course to complete. The aim is a single, proven win you can point to. One clean result earns the credibility to take on the next, and the one after that.

What to read first

Start with the checklist; it is the wider lens. Once it points to a specific process worth fixing, the quick-start helps you scope the work. To put language around what either one surfaces, the glossary defines the terms plainly, and the frameworks show how the same instruments work inside an engagement. If you are still deciding whether you need outside help at all, the guide to what a fractional COO does is the place to start.

The eight areas the checklist examines

The audit is organised around the places an operating model tends to fail under scale: ownership, decision rights, how work flows, where it queues, how quality is defined and measured, how problems escalate, how the leadership team meets, and whether reporting is trusted. Most operations are strong in some and quietly exposed in others, and the exposed ones rarely announce themselves. The checklist exists to make the quiet weaknesses visible before they become expensive. Working through all eight, even the areas you assume are fine, is what separates a useful read from a comfortable one — the area you skip is often the one that matters.

What good output looks like

A well-run audit does not end in a score; it ends in a decision. The output you want is a short, ranked list: the two or three places the operating model is most exposed, each with a note on the evidence behind it and a first action. Resist the instinct to act on everything at once — capacity spent on the third-ranked problem is capacity not spent on the first. Fix the constraint, let the system settle, then re-run the relevant section to confirm the gain held. The same discipline applies whether you are running the checklist alone or walking through it inside a diagnostic: find the constraint, fix it, prove it, move on.

Turning a one-off read into a habit

A single audit is a snapshot. The operations that stay strong treat it as a recurring instrument — run lightly each quarter, in full once or twice a year. Operating models drift: a process that scored well last year quietly degrades as volume rises and the people who held it move on. Re-running the checklist on a cadence catches that drift while it is still cheap to correct, and it gives a leadership team a consistent way to talk about the operating model over time rather than only when something breaks. The quick-start works the same way — one proven improvement becomes a method you reach for again, not a project you finished once.

Common patterns these tools surface

Across very different companies, the same few weaknesses recur. Decisions that default upward because ownership was never made explicit. A quality number that looks healthy until you separate first-pass work from rework. Reporting that nobody fully trusts, so the leadership team argues with the figures instead of acting on them. A cadence that produces updates rather than decisions. None of these are effort problems, which is why working harder rarely fixes them. They are design problems in the operating model — exactly the things these instruments are built to expose, and exactly the things worth fixing first.