The Mandate Diagnostic Template
Use this template at the start of a new role, at the beginning of an annual planning cycle, or at any point when the mandate has drifted and must be re-established. It is designed to be completed over two to four weeks — long enough to observe real decisions, short enough to produce actionable clarity before the first planning cycle begins.
It is not a questionnaire. It is an observation framework for how decisions actually happen. The answers come from watching what the organization does, not from asking what it intends.
Question 1 — What would break if this role did not make specific decisions?
Observe the last 60–90 days of real decisions. For each decision that required or should have required CTO-level judgment, record:
| Decision | Who made it? | Was CTO involved? | What was the structural consequence? | Does this reveal a mandate dependency? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
After completing the table, answer:
What does the pattern of decisions — made well, made badly, or not made at all — reveal about what the organization depends on this role to do?
____________________________________________________________
What three decisions, if made consistently well by this role, would most improve the structural coherence of the system?
1. __________________________________________________
2. __________________________________________________
3. __________________________________________________
Question 2 — Where does my authority actually reach under pressure?
Identify two or three recent decisions where the CTO’s position was tested and did not hold — where a business leader, a delivery timeline, or a capital constraint pushed against the CTO’s structural judgment. For each:
| Decision | CTO’s position | What happened under pressure? | Where did the boundary reveal itself? |
|---|---|---|---|
After completing the table, answer:
What is the current boundary of real authority — not nominal authority, but the authority that holds when it is challenged?
____________________________________________________________
What would need to be true — in terms of CEO alignment, documented hypothesis, or established track record — for that boundary to expand?
____________________________________________________________
Question 3 — What does this mandate require that I am not currently doing?
Using the patterns identified in Questions 1 and 2, identify the specific gaps between what the mandate requires and what is currently happening:
| Gap | What the mandate requires | What is currently happening | What needs to change |
|---|---|---|---|
After completing the table, answer:
What are the three highest-leverage actions — not the most visible, not the most urgent, but the ones that would most directly close the gap between what the mandate requires and how the system currently operates?
1. __________________________________________________
2. __________________________________________________
3. __________________________________________________
The output of this diagnostic is not a strategy document. It is a clarity document — a specific, honest account of what the mandate depends on, where its boundary sits, and what must happen for it to be exercised effectively. That clarity is the precondition for everything else in this manual to work.