Approach
The numbers decide where this goes.
If I walked in and told you what your problem is before reading your data and understanding the system, I would be doing exactly what the vendors do: telling you a confident story after reading one chapter of the book.
You do not need a theory before you call, and I do not bring one either. The numbers come first and the story comes out of them.
- 01
Start in the data.
No theory going in, yours or mine. I pull the source exports, reconcile the systems against each other, and follow what they show rather than what the call was about.
Output What turned up, and where it points next
- 02
Make the tradeoffs explicit.
Compare the plausible courses of action against economics, operating constraints and the cost of being wrong.
Output Options, decision criteria and scope
- 03
See it through.
The findings become a plan with named owners, review points and measures that show whether it worked. A diagnosis that stops at the recommendation is not finished work.
Output Roadmap, ownership and review cadence
Why the picture drifts.
Vendor reports say it is working, and you still could not say what you would lose if you cut one. Managers agree in the meeting, and what was agreed does not happen. A change you approved months ago has no owner who can say whether it worked.
None of that means you have the wrong people. Everyone is doing what makes sense from where they sit, paid the way they are paid, reporting what they are asked to report. Your departments are very good at hitting their numbers. The catch is that the picture you decide on is built from those same scoreboards, so it inherits their blind spots.
I start where the numbers start.
I go through it myself: the CRM, the pay plans, the vendor reporting, what customers wrote publicly. I trace how the picture you see gets built, and I follow whatever the numbers point at, including the places nobody asked me to look. Once something does hold together, I try to break it before I bring it to you.
Sometimes it lands where everybody expected, and you proceed knowing it does. Often the dealership is solving a different problem than it has, and finding that out early is the cheapest thing I will ever do for you. The diagnostic is a fixed fee and I do not sell the fix, so I earn nothing by finding something wrong.