Branch it until someone can start.
One question at the root, cut on an equation. You stop when a branch names something a person could start Monday.
Every leaf ends one of three ways: worked first, parked in writing, or handed up.
Walk one down
The board asked for growth. Every node carries its share of the gap and how much of it we can move. Click a branch.
Win new customers
Pipeline, win rate, sellers: everything upstream of a first invoice.
Two children, two clocks, so they cannot share an owner.
Convert the pipeline
Hypothesis: late-stage deals die in procurement, not on price.
Code the last forty lost deals by where they died.
Hire more sellers
What the board actually asked for.
A seller ramps in three quarters. Nobody hired now lands in time.
Grow the ones we have
Expansion minus churn: everything that happens to a logo we already have.
Biggest branch here, and nobody in the room raised it.
Bill the usage over plan
Hypothesis: accounts past their contracted limit are billed as if not.
One query against the metering table settles it.
Stop losing them
The minus half of the branch above. On the tree even if nobody calls it growth.
Every exit names the same missing integration: a roadmap call, not a revenue one.
Largest leaf on the board, settled by one query.
The board’s own idea, and the one thing that cannot land in time.
A third of the gap, sized and named, not ours to fix.
A brainstorm gives the same six items. Only the tree says which opens the quarter and which gets refused.
How to build one
Write a question, not a topic
“Revenue” is a topic. A question names a metric, a size and a horizon, and can be answered wrongly.
Cut on an equation, then check MECE
Sales, Marketing and Success are three teams, not causes: one renewal lands in all three. An identity leaves no gap.
Hang a hypothesis on every leaf
A leaf that names a topic cannot be worked. A leaf that claims something can be killed by one analysis.
Stop where you would act
Rank on share and grip, work the top branch, park the rest in writing. Splitting further is decoration.
A why-tree diagnoses, a how-tree designs; this one is a how-tree. Charles Conn and Robert McLean call the family logic trees: bulletproofproblemsolving.com.
Stop when you can fill this line
Cannot fill it? The branch splits again, or gets parked in writing.
[leaf]: [share] of the gap. Hypothesis [claim]. Test [analysis]. Owner [name], [date].
B1 Bill usage over plan: a third. Hypothesis: accounts past their limit are billed as if not. Test: one metering query. Owner Priya, Friday.
A2 Hire more sellers: a tenth. Parked Sep 12: ramp outlasts the horizon. Reopen if it moves.
A tree does not answer the question. It tells you in week one which part you will not answer, and who to tell.