The process

Do not rush from opportunity to solution.

RCAG runs the same sequence on every client, prospect, referral, and opportunity: understand, diagnose, prioritize, organize, execute, measure. Beneath those six public stages sits a thirteen-step internal operating cycle with a working template at every step, so that no engagement depends on anyone remembering what to do next.

The six stages

Opportunity to understanding, understanding to diagnosis, diagnosis to priority, priority to organized action

Understand Diagnose Prioritize Organize Execute Measure
Understand
RCAG records the opportunity before giving any advice, screens whether there is a real problem and a legitimate role for the firm, and then takes the owner's own account of what they are experiencing. The client owns the experience. RCAG owns the diagnostic process, and does not confuse the two.
Diagnose
The presented problem, the immediate problem, and the potential root problems are three different things. RCAG separates what is known from what is asserted, assumed, or simply missing, identifies what does not add up, and records how confident the diagnosis actually is. A hypothesis is not a diagnosis until the evidence supports it.
Prioritize
Almost every struggling business has several problems at once, and attacking them simultaneously is how an owner runs out of time and money before any of them is fixed. RCAG determines what must happen first, what can wait, and which single correction would make the remaining problems easier to correct.
Organize
Once the objective is clear, RCAG maps what the objective requires: knowledge, experience, systems, people, relationships, capital, and professional expertise. Then it determines who provides each. Where the answer is an attorney, an accountant, a lender, or an engineer, RCAG says so and organizes it. The client's need determines the professional, never the availability of referral compensation.
Execute
Work proceeds against a written scope with named owners and dates, after the agreement is signed and the commencement payment is received. Reviews ask what changed, what was completed, what was not and why, what new facts emerged, and what decision is now required. Systems are only as good as the people operating them, so execution is measured alongside the plan.
Measure
A baseline is recorded at the start of every engagement so that the result can be measured against something rather than described. Where the result falls short, the question is which part fell short: the strategy, the system, the execution, the competence, the resources, the leadership, or the diagnosis itself.
The governing rule

An RCAG hypothesis is not a diagnosis until the evidence supports it.

New Client & Opportunity Playbook, step five

Underneath the six

A thirteen-step operating cycle, with a template at every step

RCAG opens a fresh copy of its operating playbook for every new client, prospect, referral, project, partnership, and business opportunity, and works the steps in order unless a documented reason makes one unnecessary. The templates themselves are internal. The sequence is not a secret, because the sequence is the point.

CaptureRecord the opportunity before giving advice.
ScreenDecide whether to proceed, refer, or decline.
ListenGet the client's account without treating it as the diagnosis.
InvestigateSeparate facts from assertions and assumptions.
DiagnoseDetermine what appears to be producing the symptoms.
PrioritizeEstablish the order of operations.
OrganizeMap the capability required and who provides it.
ProposeConvert judgment into a precise commercial offer.
ContractPut scope, responsibilities, and economics in writing.
ActivateTurn a signed engagement into an operational file and a baseline.
ExecuteDo the work in order, with clear ownership.
MeasureDetermine whether the work produced the intended result.
DecideClose, continue, expand, refer, pause, or terminate.

Two of these steps do work that most advisory relationships never do at all. Screen gives RCAG a documented way to decline, which protects the client as much as the firm. Decide means no engagement drifts on indefinitely: every one ends in an explicit decision, recorded with the reason for it.

What you receive

A proposal RCAG cannot write is a diagnostic RCAG will propose instead

Before RCAG proposes an engagement, it has to be able to state the client objective, RCAG's own engagement objective, its understanding of the situation, the recommended engagement type, the scope, the deliverables, the client's responsibilities, any outside professional capability required, the exclusions, the timeline, the fee, the payment schedule, the definition of victory, and how progress will be measured.

If any of those cannot be defined responsibly, the honest proposal is a diagnostic rather than a guessed solution. That single rule is what separates advisory work from selling a package, and it is the reason RCAG's first engagement with most clients is an assessment rather than a program.

Exclusions matter as much as scope. A proposal that says only what is included leaves the client to assume the rest, and assumption is where advisory relationships fail. RCAG states what it is not doing.

Questions about the process

How the engagement actually runs

It depends on how much of the evidence already exists and how quickly the owner can produce it. The questionnaire and a discovery conversation come first, and RCAG will not compress the investigation to hit a start date. Where a business is under immediate time pressure, RCAG sequences the urgent item separately rather than shortening the diagnosis of everything else.
If the evidence says so, yes. RCAG does not accept a client's diagnosis merely because the client is willing to pay for the solution they already have in mind. Most owners arrive describing a symptom accurately and a cause incorrectly, which is not a failure on their part. It is the reason an outside diagnostic is worth buying.
RCAG says so, with the reason, and either refers the matter to a more appropriate professional or declines it. The screening step exists specifically so that decision gets made early and deliberately rather than three months into an engagement that was never a fit.
No. Understanding your situation and screening it is not the same as consulting on it, and RCAG deliberately does not give away substantial advisory work during discovery. Work begins after the agreement and statement of work are signed and any required commencement payment is received.
They are recorded, and if they justify work beyond the agreed scope they become a new objective with a new scope, a new fee, and a written change order or statement of work. Scope is never allowed to expand silently, because silent expansion is how both the budget and the relationship break.

The first step is a questionnaire

Twelve questions about the business, the situation, and what would count as a win a year from now. You are not expected to diagnose your own business.

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Roland Conner Advisory Group LLC provides business advisory and consulting services. RCAG does not provide legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice. Submitting information through this website does not create a consulting or advisory relationship.