Equinexus Partners

Diagnostics

Before the next intervention, examine the picture behind it.

Equinexus Diagnostics works alongside leaders, teams, boards and institutions to examine what is happening, compare perspectives and identify where action would be useful. Our diagnostics are African rooted, contextually grounded and designed to support consequential decisions rather than produce a score for its own sake.

Selector

Choose the question you need to answer

  • SIGHTLINE

    01

    Are we working from a sufficiently clear picture of the institution?

  • Reveal Yourself

    02

    How are my leadership patterns interacting with my current context?

  • GROVE

    03

    What shapes how our team works together?

  • TRAIL

    04

    What institutional conditions are contributing to recurring patterns?

  • Boardroom Reset Index

    05

    How does our board exercise authority and collective responsibility?

  • Stewardship Compass

    06

    How are power, accountability and agency experienced across the institution?

  • STANCE

    07

    How does our approach to government partnership affect ownership, capability and public value?

An engagement can focus on one question or combine relevant instruments.

Instruments

Seven diagnostic instruments

Instrument

SIGHTLINE

01

Test the picture informing high stakes decisions. SIGHTLINE compares formal accounts with lived experience to show where the institutional picture is coherent, contested or too incomplete to act on.

Useful when
Strategy refreshes, leadership transitions, restructuring or major investment in change.
What you receive
Seven Sightline profile, written findings, facilitated interpretation and priorities for leadership attention.
Decision supported
Whether to proceed, adjust the approach or investigate more deeply.

Instrument

Reveal Yourself

02

See how leadership identity and coherence are organised now. Reveal Yourself is a developmental mirror of how leadership identity and coherence are organised across six forces, surfacing patterns, tensions and contextual modifiers that shape judgement, especially under pressure.

Useful when
Leadership transitions, expanded responsibility, sustained pressure or intentional development.
What you receive
Leadership Identity Report with force profiles, organising patterns, archetype tendencies, tensions and contextual signals.
Decision supported
What to protect, practise differently or develop next.

Instrument

GROVE

03

Read the team as a living system, not a collection of individuals. GROVE shows how trust, resilience, shared direction, identity, leadership clarity and power combine to enable or deplete collective capacity.

Useful when
New or changing teams, recurring conflict, unclear decision rights or stalled collective performance.
What you receive
Team profile, coherence heat map, organising pattern interpretation and facilitated team discussion.
Decision supported
Which agreements, decision practices or working arrangements to retain or change.

Instrument

TRAIL

04

Trace the conditions producing recurring institutional patterns. TRAIL distinguishes Stewardship Debt from fracture, drift, capture and absence so leaders can choose a response that fits the conditions.

Useful when
Recurring institutional problems, declining trust, stalled strategy or interventions that do not hold.
What you receive
Institutional conditions profile, cross force analysis, Conditions Intelligence reading and sequenced priorities.
Decision supported
What to preserve, repair, redesign or build, and in what sequence.

Instrument

Boardroom Reset Index

05

See where governance and Stewardship Debt accumulate. The Boardroom Reset Index examines how the board works as a governance system across purpose, legitimacy, relationships, authority, structures and context.

Useful when
Board reviews, chair or executive transitions, role ambiguity, decision gridlock or governance redesign.
What you receive
Governance profile, domain findings, organising pattern interpretation and facilitated board discussion.
Decision supported
Which board practices, role boundaries or arrangements to retain, reset or rebuild.

Instrument

Stewardship Compass

06

Examine how power and authority are experienced across the institution. The Stewardship Compass tests whether authority is legitimate and whether decision pathways, accountability, agency and voice support stated commitments.

Useful when
Delegation, organisational redesign, locally led commitments or gaps between formal authority and lived practice.
What you receive
Power and legitimacy report, accountability map, facilitated interpretation and priorities for further work.
Decision supported
What must change in authority, accountability or participation, and at what level.

Instrument

STANCE

07

Test whether government partnership builds ownership and capability. STANCE examines the stance from which an organisation engages government and whether the relationship builds ownership, institutional capability and sustained public value.

Useful when
Government partnerships, localisation, policy influence or transition from external support.
What you receive
Partnership profile, developmental position, evidence quality indicators and facilitated interpretation.
Decision supported
How to move from access or influence towards capability and sustained public value.

STANCE in practice

Government partnership is read in context.

Facilitated inquiry works alongside participants to test how ownership, capability and public value are experienced across the partnership.

Vongai Nyahunzvi facilitating a circle discussion with leaders
Equinexus facilitated leadership session

Integration

Coherence Map

When an engagement uses more than one diagnostic, the Coherence Map brings the findings together. It works alongside participants to examine whether patterns at different levels may be related, while keeping unresolved questions and uncertainty visible. It does not assume that every issue has one underlying cause.

Evidence

Organisations we have worked with

Diagnostic work is commissioned by boards, executive teams and institutions across sectors and countries.

  • United Nations Development Programme
  • UN Women
  • The Action Foundation
  • British International Investment
  • London School of Economics
  • University of Global Health Equity
  • African Leadership University
  • Association of Commonwealth Universities
  • Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
  • Transport for London
  • Natural History Museum
  • BT Group

Commission the inquiry your decision requires

Bring the situation you want to understand and the decision the findings should inform. We agree the relevant instrument and scope, who participates, the evidence to be gathered, who receives the findings, the outputs, timing, delivery team and fee.

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