Thirty-six free tools you can use with your team today

Eight discovery questions, sixteen flaggable gaps, and a live-built recommendation across three phases: quick wins, the system, then scale. Every recommended piece opens a worked sample.

Use it: In the sales conversation, or auditing your own onboardingRuns in the browser

Capture the full client picture at signing (company, financials, retail, goals) and generate a clean, shareable client brief.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

A warm, structured welcome that sets expectations the moment they sign, so excitement flows into onboarding, not a pile of early tasks.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

Make it clear who owns what, with add-and-remove rows and role columns, so client requests route correctly instead of piling on one person.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

Turn onboarding into an early, visible win: a 30/60/90 plan with a goal, owner, and success metric per phase.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

Set response-time norms and one intake channel, so nothing reads as a fire drill and every request has a lane.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

Request every login and data source in one structured pass, with the access level and who grants it, instead of fifteen back-and-forth emails.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

A documented, repeatable onboarding process plus the internal handoff checklist, so it survives any one person being busy.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

Stay close in the first month: Day 1 / 7 / 30 touchpoints and a short pulse survey that catches friction early.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

A focused kickoff for alignment, not discovery, with what is in scope and out of scope written down and agreed.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

Tune the intake emphasis and first deliverable per engagement type, so a diligence client is not onboarded like a fractional-exec client.

Use it: During client onboardingRuns in the browser

Prepare, run the meeting, follow up within 48 hours. Every item has an owner, and the printout is the kickoff summary you send.

Use it: Before any project startsFill in online

Risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies on one page, each with an ID, an owner, and a status. The working document of a running project.

Use it: Weekly, while the project runsFill in online

Tasks down the side, roles across the top, one Accountable per row. The letters color themselves as you set them.

Use it: When ownership is fuzzyFill in online

Red, Amber, Green health for schedule, budget, scope, and risk, plus the decisions you need from the reader. One page, on a cadence.

Use it: Weekly or bi-weekly, to sponsorsFill in online

Rate each stakeholder on power and interest and the sheet answers with the engagement strategy for their quadrant.

Use it: At kickoff and every phase changeFill in online

Why the project exists, what done means, what is explicitly out of scope, milestones, and the sign-off that gives the plan teeth. One page.

Use it: Before the kickoffFill in online

What was decided, by whom, why, and what was rejected, so month-three arguments take one minute instead of one meeting.

Use it: The day a decision is madeFill in online

Score likelihood times impact and the sheet computes and colors the result. Every risk keeps an owner and a response.

Use it: Deep risk work; pairs with the RAID logFill in online

Imagine the project already failed, list why, vote on the causes, and leave with owned preventive actions. The forward-looking twin of the retro sheet.

Use it: After the plan, before the workFill in online

Verify deliverables, compare plan to actual, capture lessons specific enough to reuse, and end the project on purpose.

Use it: The last week of any projectFill in online

A rolling document, one per person. Their items are discussed first, which is what stops it becoming a status meeting.

Use it: Weekly, at the start of the one-to-oneFill in online

Two or three lines per person, read aloud in ninety seconds. The last column is the mechanism: three weeks open forces a decision.

Use it: Weekly, in a meeting you already haveFill in online

Filled in before the invitation goes out. If you cannot write the question it answers, the meeting is quicker to cancel than to complete.

Use it: Before scheduling anythingFill in online

Four questions in order, starting with what went well. Produces one change with an owner and a date. Not five.

Use it: End of a project, month or sprintFill in online

Three or four things a colleague could verify without asking anybody. Built by sorting ten real examples, not by writing from scratch.

Use it: Attached to the work itselfFill in online

Three goals a quarter, each with a starting point as well as a target, and a line naming what you will not trade to hit it.

Use it: Once a quarter, in a planning sessionFill in online

People down the side, the work across the top, four levels in each cell. Read by column to find the things only one person can do.

Use it: Reviewed twice a yearFill in online

Four sentences written before you speak. Writing the observable forces you to notice when all you have is an inference.

Use it: Within a day or two of the workFill in online

Both sides write three or four lines during the conversation. Four of these assemble into the annual review automatically.

Use it: Four times a year, twenty minutesFill in online

Mark only unprompted contributions across three meetings. It will tell you more about your team than a survey would.

Use it: Three consecutive team meetingsFill in online

Understand and change almost nothing for a month, install three basics, then start producing through other people.

Use it: Your first ninety days managingFill in online

What you are committed to, in hours, against what you actually have. Turns a feeling about being stretched into a number you can discuss.

Use it: Five minutes, same day each weekFill in online

Two minutes a fortnight, kept privately. The last column is what makes it evidence rather than a diary.

Use it: Fortnightly, while it is freshFill in online

The questions to ask in week one, and what to have done by day fourteen, thirty, sixty and ninety.

Use it: Your first week in a new roleFill in online

One sub-skill, attached to a task that already happens weekly. Ten minutes a week, and expect the first fortnight to be worse.

Use it: Six weeks, one skill at a timeFill in online