Credit where it's due: this framework is Jonathan Wistman's, from Unrecruitable. I've used it on my own shop for two years and on every customer's shop since. It is the single highest-leverage culture exercise I've run. Here is the version you can do this weekend in 90 minutes.
The premise
You can't directly control how someone acts. But you can control how they think. How they think drives how they feel. How they feel drives how they act. The whole leadership job collapses down to: pick the thought you want, then engineer every touchpoint to reinforce it.
Step one: pick the thought
Get a piece of paper. Write down the ONE thought you want every employee, customer, and candidate to have when they encounter your company. Examples that work:
- This company builds champions.
- These are the real pros in town.
- I want to work here for the next decade.
Pick one. Just one. If you pick three, you have zero. The whole exercise hinges on the constraint.
Step two: list the touchpoints
For 15 minutes, write down every touchpoint your company has with an employee, candidate, or customer. Truck wraps. Voicemail greeting. Job descriptions. Shop bay layout. Friday afternoon close- out. Invoice. Service-call follow-up. The walkway from the customer parking spot to your lobby door. The way a tech rings the doorbell. Be exhaustive. Aim for 30-40 touchpoints.
Step three: score every touchpoint
For each touchpoint, score 1-3:
- 3 - reinforces the thought.
- 2 - neutral or invisible.
- 1 - contradicts the thought.
Be honest. The 1s are where the work is. A truck wrap that says "your local roofing experts since 1998" is neutral. A truck wrap that says "Champions of the Atlanta skyline" in your brand colors with the names of your A-players underneath reinforces the thought. The 1s are the ones quietly telling your team and customers the opposite of what you intend.
Step four: triage
Pick the three 1s with the highest impact. (The truck wrap beats the locker room door - more eyeballs.) Write the fix or the kill in one sentence each. Schedule them for the next 30 days. Block calendar time the same way you'd block a customer install.
Step five: revisit quarterly
Re-score the whole list quarterly. New touchpoints will appear; old ones will drift. The thought doesn't change, but the touchpoints constantly need re-aligning. This is the leader's job - not delegable, not skippable.
If you want the productized version with the touchpoint checklist and a guided dashboard, that's the /auditmodule. $99 one-time. Standalone wedge. Read the page, decide if it's worth $99 to skip the setup yourself.