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TMI / THE WORK

WHAT $5,000
ACTUALLY BUYS.

The audit instrument in full, and a complete worked example scored end to end. The company in that example does not exist — TMI publishes no case studies and attaches no result to any named client, so an honest fiction is the only way to show you the real thing.

See the worked example ↓ What the audit is ↗

THE INSTRUMENT

TEN AREAS.
WRITTEN ANCHORS.

Ten areas, ten points each. Each area has written anchors at 0, 5 and 10, and the only other scores available are 3 and 8, for a company that sits clearly between two of them.

Finer granularity would be false precision and would make two auditors' scores incomparable, which defeats the point of having a rubric at all.

01

OWNER INDEPENDENCE

0
The owner is the operating system. Pricing, escalations, scheduling problems and purchases all route through them. They could not leave for a week without arranging cover for themselves.
5
The team handles day-to-day work, but the owner is still the hub for anything unusual: exceptions, pricing judgment, the difficult customer. Thirty days away is imaginable but would cost something.
10
The company operates without daily owner involvement. Someone else can price, escalate and approve. Thirty days away is a logistics question, not a risk.

02

SALES INTELLIGENCE

0
Leads are not systematically tracked. No CRM, or one nobody uses. Nobody knows how many quotes are open or why the last ten were lost. Old quotes are simply gone.
5
Leads are captured and there is a CRM in use, but follow-up depends on individuals remembering. Close rate is knowable with effort. Dormant customers are not worked.
10
Every lead tracked, follow-up owned and systematic, close rate and cycle length visible on demand, loss reasons recorded, dormant accounts actively reactivated.

04

DATA VISIBILITY

0
Ordinary questions about the company take a day and several phone calls. Numbers exist in systems nobody can reach without asking the person who owns them.
5
Some numbers are available on demand and some are assembled on request. Two people pulling the same figure can still disagree about what it means.
10
The company can answer ordinary questions about itself in under a minute, with one agreed definition per measure and a record behind every number.

Three of the ten shown in full; the other seven — operations, technology, automation, customer experience, team systems, financial visibility and scale readiness — are built identically. All ten, and what we ask about each →

Example Machine Works does not exist. Every number below was written to demonstrate the instrument.

A WORKED EXAMPLE

EXAMPLE MACHINE WORKS
SCORED 35 / 100.

A twenty-four person machine shop, thirty-one years old, profitable, good at the work. This is roughly where established companies land, and the reason is almost always the same: they grew by being good at the job rather than by building systems.

01

Owner independence

3

Every quote over about four thousand dollars waits for the owner, and both long-standing customers call his mobile directly.

02

Sales intelligence

0

No CRM. Quotes live in a spreadsheet by month; nobody could produce the list of RFQs that were never followed up.

03

Operations

5

Jobs route reliably through the ERP, but the real schedule is a whiteboard reconstructed each morning from memory and a phone call.

04

Data visibility

3

Load and backlog are knowable by walking the floor. Margin by part family is not available at all without the accountant.

05

Technology

5

The ERP is capable and underused; the quoting spreadsheet, the inspection records and accounting have never been connected to it.

06

Automation

3

Roughly eleven hours a week of re-keying between the ERP, the quoting sheet and accounting, by the owner's estimate.

07

Customer experience

5

Customers get a responsive, personal service and no way to see where their parts are without telephoning.

08

Team systems

3

Setup sheets exist for about a third of repeat parts. The two senior machinists hold the rest, and one is sixty-three.

09

Financial visibility

5

Monthly accounts are timely and accurate. Which part families actually pay is a matter of opinion in the building.

10

Scale readiness

3

A second shift has been discussed for two years. Nobody can say what it would cost or whether the quoting bottleneck would survive it.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SCORE35 / 100

Scorecard for Example Machine Works, a fictional company. Not a client, not a real result.

Every line carries one sentence of evidence quoting what was actually said on the call. A score without evidence is rejected before the report is written — that rule is what stops the number being an opinion with a decimal point.

REPORT PAGE 03

THE INTELLIGENCE MAP.

Lead to follow-up, each step marked clear, strained or broken. This is the page owners end up photographing, because it is usually the first time the whole path has been drawn in one line.

  1. LEADArrives by email and telephone, recorded nowhere consistent.STRAINED
  2. ESTIMATEOne person, one spreadsheet, no history attached.BROKEN
  3. JOBRoutes cleanly through the ERP once it exists.CLEAR
  4. PRODUCTIONThe floor knows what it is running and in what order.CLEAR
  5. DELIVERYReliable, and the thing the shop is known for.CLEAR
  6. INVOICEAccurate, and assembled by hand from two systems.STRAINED
  7. FOLLOW-UPNothing happens unless a customer calls first.BROKEN

Note what is clear. Three of the seven steps at Example Machine Works are working well and should be left alone, which is a finding in its own right — an audit that marks everything broken is selling something.

REPORT PAGE 04

WHAT WE WOULD
FIX FIRST.

Exactly three. Not two, not five. Ranked by the shortest path between effort and relief, and weighted towards removing a dependency on one person over adding a new capability.

FIX 01

PUT THE RFQ QUEUE SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN AN INBOX

Every request for quote lands in one place with a date, an owner and a state. No new software needed to start: a shared board and a rule that nothing is quoted from memory would move this in a fortnight.

From area 02, which scored zero. The shop cannot currently name the work it did not win.

FIX 02

WRITE DOWN HOW THE ESTIMATOR PRICES

Sit with him across a dozen real quotes and record the rules he applies without noticing: where he adds setup time, which customers get handled differently, what makes him walk away. The shop owns it afterwards.

From areas 01 and 08. This is the single largest concentration of risk in the company.

FIX 03

GET MARGIN BY PART FAMILY IN FRONT OF THE OWNER MONTHLY

The numbers already exist, split between the ERP and accounting. Joining them monthly would settle an argument the shop has been having on instinct for years about which work is worth taking.

From areas 04 and 09. Both scored mid, and the gap between them is where the money is.

Each one is written so the owner could act on it without TMI. A roadmap that only works with its author standing next to it is a proposal wearing a different hat.

THE DELIVERABLE

FIVE PAGES,
YOURS OUTRIGHT.

  1. 01

    YOUR SCORE

    The number, the ten-area breakdown, and one honest paragraph about what it means. Not a grade — a map of where the company is carried by people rather than by systems.
  2. 02

    WHAT WE FOUND

    Revenue, time, operations and intelligence findings. Only what was actually observed, with the evidence attached. Nothing modelled, nothing extrapolated.
  3. 03

    YOUR INTELLIGENCE MAP

    Lead to estimate to job to production to delivery to invoice to follow-up, each step marked clear, strained or broken. This is the page owners photograph.
  4. 04

    WHAT WE WOULD FIX FIRST

    Exactly three. Not two, not five. Written so you could act on them without TMI, because a roadmap you can only execute with its author is a proposal.
  5. 05

    YOUR INTELLIGENT COMPANY

    Today's state against the achievable state, drawn from this company's own findings rather than from a template, plus the recommended next step.

Delivered as a document you keep, whatever you decide to do next. It is written to be handed to a partner, a banker or another firm, and several have been.

THE LIMITS

WHAT IT
WILL NOT DO.

It will not tell you what you want to hear.

Most established companies score between the thirties and the fifties. They grew by being good at the work rather than by building systems, and the score reflects that rather than judging it.

It will not score an area we have no evidence for.

An area we could not assess is marked not assessed and removed from the denominator, so the score reads out of eighty rather than being quietly padded to a hundred.

It will not produce a number you cannot trace.

Every area carries one sentence of evidence quoting what was actually said. A score without evidence is rejected before the report is written.

It will not end in a proposal you have to accept.

The roadmap is written so another firm could execute it, and it is yours outright whatever you decide. Plenty of audits end with us saying the next step is not something TMI should do.

COMMON QUESTIONS

ABOUT THIS
EXAMPLE.

Is Example Machine Works a real client?

No. It does not exist. Every number, quote and finding on this page was written to demonstrate the instrument, which is why the company is labelled fictional everywhere it appears. TMI publishes no case studies and attaches no result to any named client, and we would rather show you a transparently invented example than imply something about a real one.

Why not show a real audit instead?

Because we do not have written permission to, and private client information never moves between clients. If that changes, a real one will appear here with the client's name on it and their sign-off behind it. Until then an honest fiction beats an anonymised real company, which is just a fiction you cannot check.

Why only 0, 5 and 10?

Three anchors with 3 and 8 available between them. Finer granularity is false precision and it makes two auditors' scores incomparable, which would defeat the point of having a rubric at all.

Why exactly three fixes?

Because a list of eleven things is a way of not deciding. Three is what an owner can hold, and ranking them forces us to argue about which matters most rather than hedging.

Is a low score bad news?

It is a map rather than a verdict. The companies that score lowest are frequently the ones with the most available to them, because the gap between what they know and what they can reach is the largest.

What does it cost and what do I leave with?

The audit is $5,000, in person or by phone. You leave with the Intelligent Company Roadmap and the score, and you own both outright whatever happens next. The Fit Call before it is free and carries no obligation.

NOW ON YOUR OWN COMPANY

SEE WHERE YOU SCORE.

The Fit Call first, free, fifteen minutes, to work out whether TMI should be inside your company at all.

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