The Disagreement in Your FUSION Diagnosis Is Useful Evidence

If marketing, operations and people leaders give the business very different assessments, averaging their answers can remove the most useful part of the diagnosis. The disagreement may reveal different evidence, different definitions of success or a customer promise that has never been understood consistently across the leadership team.

A diagnostic score is an invitation to investigate. It should not be treated as proof that the business is healthy or broken. Its value lies in the quality of the questions it exposes and the operating evidence leaders bring to the discussion afterwards.

Ask what each person has seen

A marketing leader may judge the proposition through customer research and campaign response. An operations leader may judge it through complaints, staffing pressure and daily exceptions. A people leader may see the experience through recruitment, management capability and employee feedback.

None of those perspectives is complete. Each can also be accurate within its own field of view. The task is to connect them around the same customer journey, rather than decide which department has the most convincing presentation.

Ask each person for a recent example supporting their assessment and one example that complicates it. This makes the discussion less defensive. It also tests whether a strong judgement rests on a repeated pattern or one memorable incident.

Separate different evidence from different ambition

Leaders can disagree because they have different information. They can also disagree because they are aiming for different things. One person may believe the offer should be highly personalised; another may believe commercial viability depends on a tightly standardised service.

That is a strategic choice to resolve, not a communication problem to smooth over. Until the leadership team decides what level of variation the proposition requires and the economics can support, employees will receive contradictory instructions.

Write the disagreement in concrete terms. “We are not aligned” is difficult to act on. “We sell flexible arrival while our staffing and room-release process assume a fixed time” identifies decisions that can be examined together. The statement should be testable against the work, rather than a judgement about another team's intentions.

Choose evidence that can change the discussion

Follow a small number of relevant journeys, inspect the information passed between teams and compare what was promised with what happened. Include ordinary delivery as well as failures. Only looking at complaints can make the business seem universally broken; only looking at successful visits can conceal the workarounds that made them possible.

Agree in advance what evidence would change each person's view. If nothing could do so, the discussion is about a fixed preference rather than diagnosis. A useful enquiry leaves room for an unexpected answer, including the possibility that the apparent problem is not the highest priority.

Turn the difference into one decision

End with a specific choice: clarify the offer, adjust a handover, test a capacity rule or change a leadership expectation. Name the owner, the evidence to collect and the point at which the team will review the result.

The FUSION Score is a starting point for this conversation, not a substitute for it. The purpose is not to make everyone give the same answer next time. It is to help the leadership team understand the business well enough to make connected decisions about the experience customers receive.

Illustrative photograph; pictured people and businesses are not case studies in this article. Photo source: Pexels.