Why the diagnosis stage is the one most often skipped, and shouldn't be

Under time pressure, it's tempting to skip straight to a recommendation, especially when the organization already has a strong hypothesis about what's wrong. The problem is that hypothesis is usually shaped by whichever department is most vocal about the issue, not by an objective look at the pipeline data.

The engagements that go worst are consistently the ones where a client insisted on skipping diagnosis because they were confident they already knew the answer — and the answer, once we eventually looked at the data, was different from what they'd assumed.