Building Capability

Tool: The Long Game Capability Audit

Chapter: 12 — The Long Game
Purpose: Take stock of where your organisation actually is on the capability-building journey — and define what playing the long game looks like in practice for your specific situation.

How to Use This Tool

This is both a diagnostic and a planning tool. It’s designed to give you an honest picture of your current state, a clear view of where you’re trying to get to, and a first step toward closing the gap.

Use it at the beginning of a capability journey, and revisit it annually.

Annual review tip: When you revisit this tool each year, bring your original Business Landscape Map alongside it. Compare the map you drew in Chapter 2 with how your operation looks today. Which roles have changed? Which process overlays have been retired or simplified? Which systems have been replaced or connected? The delta between the two maps is the most tangible evidence of capability built — far more honest than any narrative summary.

Allow 60 minutes.

Part 1: The Franchise Prototype Test

If you handed your business to a competent new owner tomorrow, what would they find?

1. What knowledge currently lives only in people — not in systems?
List the expertise, processes, and decision logic that would be at risk if key people left.

Knowledge / process:
Who holds it:
Risk if they left:

2. What would break in the first week?

What would break:
Why it's person-dependent:
What it would take to systematise it:

3. What would they not be able to do at all — because it requires the specific knowledge of one or two people?

Capability:
Who it depends on:

4. Based on this, how transferable is your business today?

[ ] Highly transferable — most core processes are documented and systematised
[ ] Partially transferable — some things are captured, others aren't
[ ] Not very transferable — the business runs on the people who've always been here
[ ] Almost entirely person-dependent — departure of key people would be a serious crisis

Part 2: Where You Are in the Journey

5. Which of the following best describes your current capability-building stage?

[ ] Pre-start — we haven't begun yet. Capability exists in people and informal processes.
[ ] Year one — we've delivered a first phase. We have proof of value but not much more.
[ ] Building layers — we're into the additive phase. Multiple releases, growing adoption.
[ ] Compounding — we're seeing returns that build on each other. The business is becoming different.
[ ] Mature — the capability is embedded. We're maintaining and extending, thinking in years.

6. What does the business do today that it couldn’t do two years ago?

New capability 1:
New capability 2:
New capability 3:

7. What do you want to be able to say in two years’ time that you can’t say today?

What the business will do that it can't now:
Who it will serve that it doesn't now:
What it will no longer depend on individual people for:

Part 3: The Four Principles Self-Assessment

Rate how well your organisation currently lives each of Redgum’s four principles (1 = not at all, 5 = genuinely strong):

1. Think big. Think whole-business first.
Before any technology decision, do you genuinely understand what the business is trying to become?

Score: ___
Where this is strong:
Where it needs work:

2. Make it consultative. Always.
Is the development process genuinely exploratory — the client and team thinking together — or is it directive and transactional?

Score: ___
Where this is strong:
Where it needs work:

3. See it as a long-term investment that returns early and keeps returning.
Does your organisation’s mindset around this investment reflect a multi-year view — or is it still project-by-project?

Score: ___
Where this is strong:
Where it needs work:

4. Be in the journey.
Is leadership genuinely engaged in the work — making decisions, being challenged, staying close to what’s real?

Score: ___
Where this is strong:
Where it needs work:

Total principles score: _____ / 20

Part 4: The Long Game Picture

8. What does this organisation look like in five years if capability building goes well?
Be specific. What can it do? Who does it serve? How does it operate? What has it stopped depending on?

Description:

9. What’s the single most important thing you need to do in the next 90 days to move toward that picture?

The action:
Why this one above others:
Who owns it:

10. What would cause you to stop — and how will you prevent that?
Most organisations that don’t build lasting capability don’t stop because things go badly. They stop because the urgency that started the journey fades. Name that risk explicitly.

Most likely reason you'd stop:
What you'll put in place to prevent it:

Your Long Game Statement

Complete this statement:

In five years, this organisation will be able to [do what it currently can’t], for [whom], because we have [built what capability]. We will know we’re on track when [what milestone is reached] by [what date].

Our long game statement:

Online Version

Want to go deeper?
The online version of this tool includes a full capability maturity model assessment, a five-year capability roadmap template, a guide for building the internal structures (budget model, governance, review cadence) that sustain the long game, and a facilitated annual review workshop format.
Available in the members area at [website]