The Friction Finder

Friction has a structure. This finds it.

A free diagnostic that reads how your organization actually runs, names the structural constraint underneath the symptoms, and delivers a plan calibrated to what your organization can realistically implement.

Your real constraint, named Specific tools, not generic advice Built for real conditions
Take the Diagnostic 8–10 minutes · Free
What It Reads

Seven places friction hides

Every organization has friction. The expensive kind hides in structure: who decides what, what happens when priorities collide, whether changes stick past the next busy season. The Friction Finder scores seven domains and finds where yours is concentrated.

01Leadership Alignment
02Execution Capacity
03Trust
04Talent Infrastructure
05Culture
06How You Work Together
07Resilience

Most of what makes work harder than it needs to be lives somewhere in that list.

What You Get

Six outputs. All specific to your situation.

  • 1Primary structural constraint. The one thing acting as a ceiling on everything else, and why.
  • 2First operational move. Where work begins to create momentum. Often different from the constraint itself.
  • 3Snapback warning. The force most likely to pull this work backward, and the anchor that holds it.
  • 4Domain scores across seven areas. A plain-language read of the pattern, from leadership alignment to resilience.
  • 5Practical outline. Specific moves with named tools, concrete actions, and a realistic ownership structure.
  • 6What unlocks next. The downstream domains that shift once the primary constraint moves.
Who's Behind This

The same read every engagement starts with.

The Designer The Friction Finder is a Work Shouldn't Suck project spearheaded by Tim Cynova, a People and Culture strategist with 20+ years building and leading mission-driven organizations, including scaling one from $4.5M to $30M with a 50-person distributed team.
The Method The diagnostic is a version of the read Tim does at the start of every engagement. It applies the same sequencing logic he uses in interim COO and CHRO work, drawing on 35+ tools developed, tested, and refined in real organizations with real constraints. For organizations that want help putting the plan into practice, the diagnostic is where that conversation starts.
Before You Start
Fit

Built for organizations of 15+ people

Below fifteen or so people, friction mostly lives in relationships, and you can usually fix it by talking to each other. More than fifteen and friction moves into structure, and structure is what this tool reads. If that's you, the diagnostic will have something useful to say.

The friction tax is already on your books.

Unnamed constraints collect it every quarter: payroll hours spent working around structure, decisions that stall in the gap, good people who leave rather than keep pushing. Ten minutes names the constraint and gives you the first move.