Diagnosis
Clarifies what is true.
Start with what you know. Uncover what you don't.
Vero helps you with the people part:
We're losing good people, and we're not sure why.
Our people are burning out, and we can't reduce the workload.
We're having trouble making decisions and getting things done.
Our data tells us something is wrong, but not how to fix it.
Our leadership team doesn't agree on where to go next.
We are making a big tech investment, and nobody is on board.
Our financial and operational performance is slipping.
We've already tried to fix this.
Your business isn't simple. Your challenges aren't simple. Your environment isn't simple.
Organizations spend tremendous time and money getting tidy answers to the wrong questions. A list of averages. Themes that are so generic they become unusable. A benchmark that compares you to organizations that your employees don't work for.
In a complicated environment, a simple answer can be very appealing. And wrong.
Vero is a diagnostic and advisory firm that helps leaders solve complex organizational problems where human performance matters.
Start with what you know. Uncover what you don't. Design what's next.
Sophisticated organizations know that the things that got them to where they are will not get them to where they need to go.
The Vero Method
Continuous improvement. Not a sequence.
Treatment
Reclaims the nuance.
A plan built around the problem you actually have.
Human experience
Stays with the work.
Measure what people experience and let it set the next diagnosis.
Diagnosis starts with what you know. Then uncovers what you don't.
What you're observing and what your data says don't always point in the same direction.
Dx │ Diagnosis
Diagnose before you treat.
Every organization is truly unique. Your industry. Your growth mandate. Your people. Your history. Your market. That merger. That executive departure. The growth that changed everything.
The diagnostic starts with what your organization already knows: surveys, workforce and financial data, performance metrics, organizational documents, dashboards, leadership observations, and history.
Then the unanswered questions determine what comes next. That may mean confidential interviews, qualitative analysis, validated or custom measurement, quantitative analysis, assessments, or original research.
Known
what you know
Surveys, workforce and financial data, comments, assessments, and the history behind them.
Unknown
what you don't
Confidential interviews, custom measurement, and original research where the answer isn't there yet.
Nuance
the story behind the story
The detail that changes what you do next. Not just more data, more insight with enough specificity to design a real solution.
Vero takes a higher resolution approach.
Sometimes the problem has been there for years and nothing has really fixed it. What employees say is the issue and what is statistically explaining it are often different.
The point is not to collect more data. It is to understand the problem at enough resolution to know what to do about it.
The truth was said. It just wasn't heard.
Four employees say the same thing. Four completely different problems.
What they said
It's really about
"You don't pay me enough."
Pay
"You don't pay me as much as..."
Fairness
"You don't pay me what I'm worth."
Recognition
"You don't pay me enough to put up with..."
Culture
Rigor + real world
Complex problems require sophisticated tools.
A strong diagnostic brings different kinds of evidence to uncover the truth. More data isn't the point. Better sensemaking is.
Everyone claims to be evidence-based. We don't just use the research, we create it.
Treatment is designed for your specific problem
Vero designs interventions that work in reality, helps you iterate, and stays until results happen.
Rx │ Treatment
01
Connected
treatment
A problem presenting as turnover may reach into structure, workload, or how information moves.
02
Custom
design
Built around the problem you actually have, not a predetermined solution.
03
Behavioral
focus
The plan has to change what someone actually does.
We don't admire the problem and leave.
Once the diagnostic provides clarity, the question changes from "What is happening?" to "What are we going to do about it?"
Complex organizational problems rarely sit neatly inside one function. A problem presenting as turnover may reach into leadership, structure, decision-making, workload, talent systems, or the way information moves.
The treatment follows those connections rather than a predetermined menu of services. The diagnostic becomes the foundation for the decisions, leadership work, operating changes, coaching, and capability building required to change the conditions underneath the problem.
Most interventions fail for one of two reasons. The diagnosis was wrong, or the treatment layer disappeared when the consultant did.
01
The catalyst
Structured work with the leadership team that surfaces the working assumptions and builds the agreements in the room together.
02
The treatment layer
Coaching, quarterly touchpoints, ongoing measurement, and an outside presence that holds the team to what it agreed.
03
The operating system
Decision rights, communication norms, meeting structure, and conflict protocols the team keeps as a shared agreement afterward.
A treatment plan that doesn't work in your reality is not a treatment plan.
What we offer
Treatment built from the diagnosis
Every engagement starts with the diagnostic. From there we draw on the offerings below, choosing only the ones your problem calls for.
Where every engagement starts
The Vero Diagnostic
Your existing data, confidential interviews and organizational history, combined into a mixed-methods diagnosis of what is helping or hindering performance.
Includes · A baseline in all three margins · Findings readout · One-year action plan
Then, as the diagnosis calls for
Executive offsites
A working session built on the diagnostic findings, not a generic agenda. Findings are framed around patterns rather than individuals, and facilitation draws out the quieter voices in the room.
Includes · Pre-event survey · Diagnostic readout · Senior leader action plan
Best for · Teams that have been through offsites before and watched nothing change.
Strengthens
Operational and human margin
Decision rights and governance
Recurring, high-impact decisions are mapped to a single owner with the Vero OATH framework: Owner, Advise, Test, Heard. Escalation paths are agreed before the pressure arrives.
Includes · Decision Map · Escalation triggers · Group-approval thresholds
Best for · Partnerships and executive teams where every decision turns into a group debate.
Strengthens
Operational and financial margin
Operating agreements
The team builds its own operating system and owns it afterward: how meetings run, how information moves, and how conflict and feedback get handled.
Includes · Shared language · Meeting architecture · Conflict and feedback protocols
Best for · Companies scaling past the structure that got them here.
Strengthens
Operational and human margin
Executive coaching
Confidential one-to-one coaching for senior leaders, anchored in a development plan built from the diagnostic and multi-directional feedback. Kept separate from performance management.
Includes · Baseline discovery · Individual development plan · Documented action items
Best for · CEOs and senior leaders carrying a transformation.
Strengthens
Financial and human margin
Sustained engagement
Monthly leadership sessions and quarterly in-person reviews that keep the work going after the first session, with an outside presence holding the team to what it agreed.
Includes · Monthly sessions · Quarterly reviews · Re-measurement against baseline
Best for · Organizations that need the change to hold after the first quarter.
Strengthens
Operational, financial and human margin
Beyond the core
Where our experience reaches further
Between more than two decades of building and exiting companies, award-winning research, published books and years on stage, there is work we take on outside the offerings above. We say yes when it draws on what we know best.
Have something else in mind? Ask us. If it is not a fit we will tell you.
Keynotes and leadership talks
Research-backed talks for leadership conferences, boards and company events. See speaking
Executive education
Leadership training for senior teams, drawn from the programs Katherine teaches to executives around the world.
Custom research and measurement
Original studies, validated instruments and custom surveys for questions your existing data cannot answer.
Founder and CEO advisory
Counsel on growth, exits and leadership transitions from a former CEO who has led three companies through them.
Workshops from our published work
Sessions built on Katherine’s books and the Human Margin toolkit, for teams that want to put the ideas to work.
Human experience isn't separate from organizational performance. It is the engine of it.
Vero uses scientific rigor and real-world experience to get a better outcome.
Hx │ Human experience
Human experience is not a soft variable.
Human experience is often treated as something to manage once the real numbers are settled. It sits apart from performance in most operating reviews, and it is the first line to cut when the quarter tightens.
It is the engine that powers the rest. Financial, operational and human results move together, and the human side moves first.
It shows up in the margins: the cost of turnover you did not want, the capacity consumed by friction, information withheld, and the ideas that quietly stop being offered.
By the time the survey closes, it has been true for a year.
01
Operational margin
How fast a decision actually gets made. How much capacity is consumed by friction, rework and the meeting held to prepare for the meeting.
02
Financial margin
Unwanted turnover and the replacement cost behind it. Lost productivity. Spending that was preventable and went unexamined.
03
Human margin
Trust, candor and judgment. Whether people raise the difficult thing early, and whether the ones you need most decide to stay.
What gets measured
Every engagement is measured in all three margins
The diagnostic sets a baseline in each margin. We measure against it as the work goes on, so you can see what moved and what did not.
Operational margin
- Time from issue to decision
- Decisions escalated or reopened
- Capacity lost to meetings and rework
Financial margin
- Regretted turnover
- Replacement and vacancy cost
- Productivity lost to disengagement
Human margin
- Trust in leadership
- Whether people raise problems early
- Intent to stay among key talent
When we measure
Baseline
Set during the diagnostic, before any treatment begins.
120 days
The first formal checkpoint against the baseline.
12 months
A full reassessment, with targeted follow-up interviews.
The next diagnosis
What moved and what did not sets what we treat next.
Truth is not just our name.
It's what unleashes your potential.
The most resilient organizations have the courage to face the demands of reality, even when the truth is uncomfortable. Finding clarity means staying true to what the evidence is actually telling you. Truth requires both candor and restraint.
Because what you design next works better when it is built on what is actually true.
What problem are you trying to solve?
You don't need to know exactly what is causing it or what kind of engagement you need. Tell us what you're seeing, what you've already tried, what your data seems to be telling you, and what still doesn't make sense. We can start there.
Start a conversation→