Insight · looking ahead

Commitment Inventory

What your company has already committed to, and what can still be reversed. A list of the decisions that tie down your future, each with an estimate of what reversing it would cost, and a calendar of when each option opens again or closes for good.

What it's about

Every organization has already decided part of its future. A seven-year framework contract, an ERP system that every process now runs on, a site, a settled division of responsibilities, a key figure that has driven the budget for years. Most were made in day-to-day business. How far they reach became clear later, and the leadership team rarely discussed it.

Then there's a second kind of commitment that isn't written in any contract. When new knowledge meets an old rule, the rule usually wins, because only departing from it needs a reason. You can hear it in a sentence everyone knows: “We know. But that's the rule.”

Together, the two decide which future your company can still reach. The Commitment Inventory makes this visible while something can still be changed. You can book it on its own or within the Rule Assessment.

Who it's for

• Owners preparing a succession or a sale who want to know what they're leaving behind and what their successor can still decide.
• Managing directors before a strategy process who want to know their real room to move before they set goals.
• Advisory and supervisory boards facing a major investment who need to know what it commits the company to, and for how long.
• Private equity and investment firms after an acquisition who need to understand in the first months what is already tied down in the company.

Typical occasions: succession or sale, a strategy retreat, the decision on a new core system or a site, a change on the advisory board, the loss of a major customer, the feeling that “nothing really moves anymore.”

How it works

1. Clarity Call and scope, 45 minutes. We set the period, usually three to five years back, and the decision areas. There are six to choose from: contracts and partners, systems and data, sites and facilities, responsibilities and committees, key figures and rules, key people and their knowledge.
2. Documents, half a day on your side. Minutes of management and advisory board decisions, a list of contracts with terms and notice periods, the approval rules, an overview of your systems, the budget and target guidelines of recent years. No personnel files, no analysis of individual people.
3. Inventory without your involvement. Every decision that fixes the future gets four entries: when and by whom it was made, whether it was adopted as such, how long it binds and what reversing it costs in money, time and dependencies. Then I classify it as reversible, hard to reverse or binding. In the same pass I look for rules that still apply without a stated reason.
4. Conversations, three to five, 45 minutes each. With the managing director and two to four people from the level below. Which decisions do they experience as fixed, and which rules do they know have long stopped being right? The gap between what formally applies and what people experience is a finding in itself.
5. My reading time, stated in the report. The inventory is prepared by machine, in a private instance with no training of public models. I decide which candidates are right, and the report states the hours that took and what I discarded.
6. Review call, two hours. We read the results with your leadership team. Which commitments are intended and should stay? Which options expire in the next 24 months? And where does a rule need a condition, named in advance, under which you depart from it?

What you have in hand at the end

• The commitment list: the decisions from your chosen areas that documents and conversations reveal, with how long each binds, an estimated cost of reversing it plus the assumptions, and a note on whether anyone ever discussed it as a decision about the future.
• The options calendar for the next 24 months: when which option opens again, for example when a contract ends, and when one closes for good.
• The list of unexamined rules, each with the question of how you would know it's time to depart from it.
• The gap picture between formal and experienced commitment.
• A report for your advisory board or successor, with the documents used and my checking time stated.

Prices

All prices plus VAT where it applies. Credited in full against Organizational Design if you commission it within three months.

How it differs

• Scenario planning and strategic foresight: they sketch which futures are conceivable out there. The Commitment Inventory shows which of them your company can still serve. If you already have scenarios, this is their cross-check.
• Legal or financial due diligence: it lists contracts, risks and liabilities. The Commitment Inventory also covers decisions that aren't in any contract, and it asks whether they were ever adopted as decisions.
• Strategy process: it starts with the goals. Before that, the Commitment Inventory shows the room to move in which those goals can be reached.
• Management Baseline: it shows where your management system stands today. The Commitment Inventory shows how far it can still move.

What this offer can't do

The Commitment Inventory doesn't predict which future will come. Nor does it judge whether a commitment is wrong. Some commitments are intended and should stay even when that gets expensive. The results show which ones these are, so that they apply on purpose.

What it costs to reverse a contract is a commercial estimate and no legal advice. If it comes down to how a contract is interpreted, the question belongs with your lawyer.

The list is never complete, because key knowledge and settled expectations are rarely written down. The costs of reversing are estimates too. A contractual penalty can usually be put in figures, lost productivity or damage to reputation only as a range.

And the inventory depends on what was written down. Where decisions were never minuted, the conversations reconstruct them, and the report marks these points as uncertain. Often this very gap is the most important finding.

Where the method comes from

Reversible decisions may be made quickly. What is hard to reverse deserves time and a name, because later it can only be undone at great cost, if at all. The Commitment Inventory is built on this distinction. The free white paper “What AI Tests in Your Rules” shows how it applies to introducing AI.

Next step

The way in is a Clarity Call, where we work out which decision areas are worth looking at and whether the documents are enough. To check alone first whether this fits your situation, try the Pattern Check. It has twelve questions and takes three minutes.