Section 1
Evidence fragments across tools
Six months into an engagement. The steering committee convenes. The question on the table is simple: is this working?
The answer should be straightforward. There was a diagnostic at the start. It identified gaps, dependencies, sequencing risks. A set of workstreams was defined. Deliverables were scoped. Value cases were articulated. All the components of a rigorous engagement exist somewhere.
The problem is that “somewhere” is the operative word. The diagnostic lives in a presentation from Q1. The delivery tracker lives in a spreadsheet that three people update. The value cases live in a proposal document that no one has opened since it was signed. The decisions live in email threads and meeting notes.
Where engagement evidence lives today
Slides
- Diagnostic findings
- Maturity scores
- Dimension analysis
Spreadsheet
- Delivery tracker
- Status updates
- Timeline milestones
Proposal doc
- Value cases
- Commercial hypotheses
- Scope commitments
Email / memory
- Key decisions
- Stakeholder positions
- Change rationale
No structural link between any of these.
“We spent £2m on this transformation and I can’t tell my board what changed.”
How Steerpoint solves this
Section 2
Reconstruction is expensive
When the steering committee asks whether the engagement is working, the honest answer is: we would need to rebuild the evidence to know. Pull the original diagnostic. Cross-reference the tracker. Revisit the value cases. Reconstruct the decisions from memory. Then make a judgment call.
This is the reconstruction tax. It is paid in senior time, in evidence that does not survive translation, and in the weeks it takes to produce an answer that should already exist.
The reconstruction tax
Time to answer "is it working?"
Senior hours burned per review
Evidence that survives reconstruction
Every consulting firm has felt this. The ones with the resources build proprietary systems to close it. McKinsey, BCG, Bain. Their internal platforms connect assessment data to engagement tracking to benchmark accumulation. Those systems are competitive advantage, held close.
But those systems are closed gardens. They only work inside one firm. They cannot travel with the client. They do not create a shared accountability surface between the firm and the buyer. Their existence proves the problem is worth solving. Their architecture is wrong.
Section 3
The evidence chain is broken by default
Every strategic engagement produces a chain of evidence. Assessment reveals gaps. Gaps justify value cases. Value cases inform decisions. Decisions scope deliverables. Deliverables produce artifacts. This chain is the accountability spine of the engagement.
The problem is structural. The assessment lives in one tool. The value cases live in another. The decisions live in a third. Every boundary between tools is a broken link. By the time the deliverable is produced, the chain of reasoning that justified it has already fragmented.
The evidence chain: how it breaks
Links break at tool boundaries. Gaps live in slides, value cases in proposals, decisions in email.
How Steerpoint solves this
Section 4
The pricing trap
Here is the sharpest consequence of the accountability gap. It is why consulting is stuck on time and materials.
If you cannot prove that value moved, you cannot price on value. The firm that closes the accountability gap does not just deliver better engagements. It unlocks a different commercial model.
The pricing evolution the accountability gap blocks
Time & materials
Bill hours. No proof of impact required. Low margin, race to the bottom.
Fixed price
Scope and price upfront. Requires baseline and gap closure tracking.
Blocked without measurement
Value-based
Price tied to outcomes. Requires assessment delta and impact attribution.
Blocked without proof of value
When the steering committee asks whether the engagement is working, the answer should not require a reconstruction project. The diagnostic evidence, the commercial hypothesis, and the delivery work should live inside the same connected object model. Navigable, auditable, alive.
Not in a rebuilt deck. In the workspace.