Running the Interview Phase of a Diagnostic in a Week

Short answer

The interview phase of a diagnostic usually takes weeks because of calendars, not questions: finding thirty-minute slots with fifteen people across sites and shifts. You can compress it to a week in three ways:

• fix the question and topics on day one;
• let each person answer on their own schedule;
• read findings as they arrive rather than after the last interview.

The steering committee then gets counts, disagreements and quotes it can trace back to the source, instead of a consultant's impressions from a stack of notes.

Where the time goes

Only the last three involve the content. The first two are logistics, and they are where most diagnostics lose a week or more.

A five-day plan

The plan works because the interviews run in parallel. Fifteen people answering in their own time over three days is faster than one consultant holding fifteen interviews over three weeks.

Monday: get the question right

A diagnostic question usually arrives as a symptom: margins down, a merger not landing, projects late. Turn it into one sentence that names the situation and the people who live it. The guide to writing a research question covers the test. Agree the decision the answer will inform, so that Friday's pack ends with options the committee can choose between.

Tuesday: invitations people will open

Response depends more on the invitation than on the interview. The sponsor should explain why the work is happening, what will be done with the answers and who will read them. The GOV.UK guidance on managing participant privacy recommends telling participants early what data you plan to collect and how you will use it. In a diagnostic, that means saying plainly that the consulting team will read individual answers. If you agreed the client will receive findings rather than transcripts, say that too.

Wednesday and Thursday: read as you go

Reading answers as they arrive lets you change course while there is still time:

• If a topic produces only opinions, rewrite it for the remaining invitations.
• If three people name the same colleague in finance as the person who knows how approvals really work, add that person.
• If a group has not answered, ask the sponsor to nudge, or record the gap honestly.

Friday: findings a committee can check

Steering committees challenge findings, and they are right to. A pack that says "communication is a recurring theme" invites the question "according to whom?". A pack that says "9 of 14 people describe approvals waiting for the regional director's sign-off; 3 disagree; 2 did not know" invites a discussion of the approval process.

For each finding, show:

• how many people described it, out of how many were asked;
• who disagreed, and what they said instead;
• what nobody could answer;
• two or three quotes, attributed to the speaker's role rather than their name.

The Magenta Book's quality framework for qualitative evaluation was written for formal evaluation. Its insistence on showing how evidence supports a conclusion applies to a five-day diagnostic too.

A fictional example: a distribution business

A fictional consulting team is asked why a distribution business's on-time delivery dropped after a warehouse system change. On Monday, the team and the operations director agree the question: "Why have on-time deliveries from the Midlands warehouse fallen since the system change in May, and what do teams do when an order is late?" They invite twelve people: pickers, shift leads, inventory controllers and two customer service agents.

By Wednesday afternoon, nine have answered:

• six describe stock discrepancies between the system and the shelf;
• two mention a training gap on the new handheld scanners;
• one describes neither.

Two people name the night inventory controller as the person who reconciles counts, so the team adds them on Thursday. On Friday, the committee sees the counts, the two competing explanations and the controller's account of the reconciliation process. It agrees to test a nightly recount in one aisle before deciding on further training.

What a week cannot do

A week is enough to describe how work happens and where people say it breaks down. It is not enough to cost a problem precisely, to represent a population of thousands, or to prove a cause. Say so in the pack. Pair the interviews with the operational data the client already has, and propose a measure for the change the committee chooses.

Where Lontra fits

Lontra is built for this phase. You write the question, review the topics and invite the people who know. Each person talks with Lontra privately, on any device, at their own pace, without an account. Lontra follows up on their answers and can read documents they share.

Deep Study goes back to people whose answers left gaps, and to colleagues they mention, within limits you set. It tells you the day before, so you can remove someone or pause. Findings show counts, disagreement and unknowns, each linked to the conversation behind it, and you can export them for the committee pack.

It does not replace the consultant's judgement about what the findings mean for the client. Nor does it replace the conversation with the sponsor about what to do next.

Arrive with evidence

The point of compressing the interviews is not speed for its own sake. It is reaching the steering committee with evidence it can question, while there is still time in the engagement to act on it.