How we work
Investigate first. Fix second.
Every engagement has 2 halves, in this order. The investigation looks back, to find what is actually causing the problem. The FRANK Method™ looks forward, to make sure it does not come back.
Rather listen?
The method as a conversation, in 10 minutes
Generated from the FranklySpeaking documents. It describes the method, not a client.
What happens, and when
The same sequence in every engagement. The scope and the fee are fixed before the first interview.
Week 0 · No fee
Talk
90 minutes with the executive who would sponsor the work. If there is something to investigate, a preliminary report sets out the scope and the fee. You decide after reading it.
Weeks 1–14
Find the cause
We collect what already exists, listen across your leadership team and the layers below it, and trace the problem back to the conditions that made it likely.
The 4 phases
- Preserve the scene. Board packs, minutes, exit interviews and the organisation chart people actually use, collected before anything moves.
- Listen properly. One-to-one sessions. Everyone gets the same questions, so the answers can be compared.
- Trace the cause. A dated timeline of decisions, separating what triggered the problem from the conditions already there.
- Score the defences. Strategy, communication, trust, accountability and escalation, each scored from the evidence.
Weeks 12–28
Fix it and keep it fixed
Your team agrees the facts, sees the cost and commits to specific changes. Then 12 weeks of putting them into practice, while our support steps back on a schedule you can see in advance.
The 5 stages of the FRANK Method™
- Frame the reality. The facts in front of the team as one shared picture.
- Reflect on alignment. What was done against what was agreed, without blame.
- Articulate the impact. A number on it, so the board can act.
- Name the adjustments. What changes, who owns it and how anyone could tell.
- Kickstart realignment. 12 weeks of practice, tracked on a register.
4 documents, and one you keep using
An investigation with no intervention is an expensive document. So the last 2 are about the change, not the finding.
Week 1
Preliminary report
A written position on 3 things: whether this looks like a system problem, what an investigation would examine and what it would cost. If there is nothing worth investigating, the first paragraph says so and you pay nothing.
Weeks 10–14
Findings report
Numbered findings, one to a page. Each carries the pattern, the evidence and the cost. How many people we heard it from is in the sentence.
Weeks 12–16
Alignment register
Every change scored for severity, likelihood and how easily it would be spotted. Each has one named owner and a completion test anyone could check.
The next 12 weeks
Embedding protocol
A published schedule for withdrawing our support, with the register re-scored at each step. Your board keeps the register when we leave.
How we get to the truth
We do not rely on anyone being honest.
Sponsors often ask: if my people will not tell me, why would they tell you? The method does not depend on it.
Events
What happened, not what people think. We ask people to walk us through real events. A specific story is much harder to spin than an opinion.
The system
Never a person. Nobody is being judged, so nobody needs to defend themselves.
Sources
Nothing can be traced. Nothing reaches you with a name on it. We sit outside your reporting line, and we leave.
Questions
The same for everyone. Where answers about the same meeting do not match, we know where to look.
Evidence
Confirmed twice. A claim becomes a finding only when a second source agrees: another person, a document or a number.
One person can spin a story. 12 people, the minutes and the budget cannot all spin it the same way.
Why the cause hides
Every organisation leans on 5 defences. Each one has gaps. A failure gets through only where the gaps line up.
That is why replacing a person, or redrawing a structure, so often changes nothing. The gaps are still there.
When the evidence points to a person
Could not see it, or did not act on it. The difference decides what happens next.
The information never arrived
The leader could not see it
The system filtered, softened or never delivered the information that would have changed the decision. That is a fault in the system. Fixing how information travels is part of the work.
The information arrived
Nothing followed
We do not judge why. We show what arrived, when and what followed, each confirmed by a second source.
We establish the facts. The board makes the call. A finding says nothing about motive or character, and makes no recommendation about anyone’s job. The person concerned sees it first and can respond, as people involved can with a draft air accident report. The board then receives every finding in full.
We protect sources, not decisions. Everything people tell us stays confidential. Decisions taken with authority are not hidden.
Where it comes from
None of our sources is a management theory. That is deliberate.
For most of the 20th century, air accident reports ended with pilot error. Replace the pilot, and the next one sits in the same seat, in front of the same faulty instrument, trained on the same rushed schedule. The accident happens again.
So investigators ask a different question: what did this person believe was true when they acted, and what made it impossible for them to know otherwise? Asked in a boardroom instead of a cockpit, that question is the whole method.
The 6 disciplines we draw on
- ICAO Annex 13, the international standard for aircraft accident and incident investigation. How to trace a chain of causes with blame excluded from the terms of reference.
- The Swiss cheese model, James Reason, 1990. How to map weaknesses across several defences and find where the gaps line up.
- Situational awareness, Mica Endsley, 1988. How to separate what a team saw, what it understood and what it expected next.
- Restorative just culture, Sidney Dekker. How to keep people talking once uncomfortable findings are on the table.
- Crew Resource Management, from flight deck training. How to tell whether junior people can safely challenge senior ones.
- Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, from reliability engineering. How to score what is left by severity, likelihood and how easily it is spotted.
Where the firm began: the green dashboard
Our founder’s own story. For 2 years a board reviewed a green dashboard. Meanwhile a systems change had stalled. The people doing the work knew why. Nobody could say so.
The chair asked our founder to find out. He listened to the people doing the work. The chair heard the truth, the board changed the targets, and 3 months later the system launched.
Nobody lied. Each layer softened the bad news a little, and the softening added up. Ask it of every green report: who told us, and how do they know?
What we publish, and what we keep
The standard, the sequence and the documents are public, so a board can judge the work before it buys it. The sources above are published literature, and we cite them.
The question sets, the scoring and the register are the working instruments. They are shared with clients under engagement.
A bounded, independent investigation. Then a structured intervention.
12–16 weeks to a finding, a fixed fee agreed before it starts, and 12 weeks of support while the fix takes hold.