The Decision Map
Are you managing momentum,
or just paying for it?
Before you commit the budget, examine the decision.
You are about to make a consequential business move.
A new website. A campaign. A rebrand. A senior hire. A change of agency. A pricing decision. A new product. A decision to keep funding something because stopping feels risky.
The move may be right.
But it may also be an expensive answer to the wrong problem.
The Decision Map examines one consequential decision before you commit more money, time, or organisational energy to it.
You bring the decision. We examine the evidence behind it. You receive a clear written view of what is happening, what is being assumed, what the evidence supports, what it does not, and what should happen next.
One consequential decision · Evidence-led examination · One 90-minute working session · Written Decision Map within 7 days
The question behind the decision
Businesses don’t make bad decisions because people are careless, they make them because a plausible explanation becomes accepted as fact before anyone has properly tested it.
- “We need more leads.”
- “The website is holding us back.”
- “The agency is not performing.”
- “We need a salesperson.”
- “Buyers do not understand what we do.”
- “The brand needs a refresh.”
- “We need to be more visible.”
- “We need to open a new branch.”
- “We should launch something new.”
Each of those may be true, but each can also conceal a different, upstream constraint.
- A business may have enough leads but lose them through a weak offer, slow follow-up, poor qualification, or unclear pricing.
- A website may not be the constraint; the business may be asking it to communicate a positioning decision it has not yet made.
- A sales hire may fail because the founding commercial judgement has never been translated into an offer, sales process, and qualification logic someone else can use.
- A campaign may underperform because it is trying to reach two audiences with one message, one budget, and one measure of success.
The Decision Map exists to find out which explanation the evidence can actually support, before the organisation pays to act on the wrong one.
A Decision Map is not a 90-minute opinion
Your 90-minute session is the working conversation. It is not the whole examination.
Before and around that session, we review the evidence relevant to the decision you are facing. What we need depends on the question, not a fixed checklist.
For one decision, that may include:
- CRM, sales, and conversion data
- Performance history and commercial results
- Marketing activity, channel data, and campaign records
- Customer feedback, customer journeys, and buyer evidence
- Hiring history, team structure, or capability constraints
- Annual plans, KPIs or OKRs, briefs, budgets, and strategy documents
- Current offers, pricing, service lines, sales materials, or supplier proposals
- Interviews with the people closest to the decision
For another decision, only a smaller evidence set may be relevant.
We do not begin by assuming the presenting problem is the real problem. We begin with the decision. Then we follow the evidence upstream -across strategic direction, positioning, commercial systems, performance, and execution – until we can identify the decision that matters most now.
If the available evidence cannot support a responsible conclusion, we will tell you that plainly. Identifying the one question that needs answering before you spend further is often the most valuable outcome.
What you get
Within seven days, you receive a concise written Decision Map designed to help you make and communicate the next move. Your Decision Map will show:
01
The situation
What is actually happening, separated from opinion, frustration, and the internal story that has built up around the issue.
02
The decision under examination
The specific commitment you are considering and the real question that must be answered before you make it.
03
The assumptions
What your organisation, advisers, suppliers, or leadership team may be treating as true without enough evidence.
04
The evidence
What the available information supports, what it challenges, and what does not fit the accepted explanation.
05
The unanswered question
The one question that still matters most if the decision cannot yet be made responsibly.
06
The decision
What should happen now: proceed, pause, stop, investigate, change direction, or define the next step before further investment.
07
The stop
What the organisation can stop funding, doing, assuming, or worrying about.
08
The next move
The most proportionate action to take next, and why it comes before the activity currently being considered.
The Decision Map is not a generic marketing audit, strategy deck or list of recommendations. It is a decision document:
a clear view of what you know, what you do not know, and what your business should do next.
What the Decision Map can save you from
A Decision Map does not guarantee that every outcome will be perfect. Its job is simpler and more valuable:
To stop you from making an expensive decision because nobody properly examined the one underneath it.
The cost of uncertainty rarely appears as a line item, it appears as repeated activity, bad hires, ongoing supplier spend, delayed decisions, wasted leadership time, and the quiet loss of confidence when nothing seems to work.
Real decisions, examined
Explore three real engagements where the obvious explanation led to the wrong action, and how examining the evidence changed the decision.
“What should we change to turn existing marketing activity into new business?”
1: SURFACE ASSUMPTION
Over 5 years, 4 BD hires produced zero traceable sales. The obvious answer appeared to be: “People don’t understand what we do – we need more and better content, visibility, or another salesperson.”
2: WHAT EVIDENCE SHOWED
CRM records, hiring history, and CEO sales conversations proved marketing activity was sufficient. Attention existed and repeat business continued, but only the founder could adapt an offer that was never written down.
3: THE DECISION MAP PIVOT
Stop BD hiring and halt spend increases. First, define the buyer problem, commercial offer, and founder-led sales logic so someone other than the CEO can sell it.
The organisation had a commercial translation problem, not a marketing-activity problem.
“Should we brand our business and build a new website around our core movement?”
1: SURFACE ASSUMPTION
A law firm came for a website and branding built around its prominent advocacy work. The initial brief focused entirely on warrior energy and court litigation identity.
2: WHAT EVIDENCE SHOWED
The founder’s instinct was right about the feeling she wanted the brand to evoke, but wrong about the form. The brief would have quietly excluded one of the firm’s two practice areas (commercial & property law) before launch.
3: THE DECISION MAP PIVOT
Flagged before design work began. Shifted the mark to a dual-engine brand architecture that represents both practice areas from day one without contradiction.
The constraint wasn’t the graphic design. It was a brief written before the complete business model was surfaced.
“How do we execute a national awareness and conversion campaign with a single budget allocation?”
1: SURFACE ASSUMPTION
An international NGO briefed a campaign with two different goals folded into one budget: general public awareness AND recruiting institutional partners to their network.
2: WHAT EVIDENCE SHOWED
Auditing channel behaviours proved these two goals required completely different audiences, media channels, and proof metrics. Splitting the budget equally would dilute both.
3: THE DECISION MAP PIVOT
Separated the goals cleanly. Named which singular outcome the available budget could fund well and built the entire media strategy around that core priority.
The organisation had a commercial translation problem, not a marketing-activity problem.
Where decisions go wrong
Businesses often invest downstream because downstream activity is visible.
A new campaign can be briefed. A website can be commissioned. A rebrand can be approved. A salesperson can be hired. More content can be published.
But the real constraint often sits earlier in the system.
Strategic direction
What the organisation is committing to, prioritising, and choosing not to do
Start campaigns, add channels, or chase new audiences
Positioning
Whether the right buyer understands relevance, value, and difference
Redesign the website or create more content
Commercial system
Offer clarity, pricing, qualification, sales logic, handover, and measurement
Hire salespeople or increase marketing spend
Execution
How consistently the organisation does what it has decided
Change agencies, add more activity, or blame the team
Scale
Whether a proven system can handle more volume, markets, budget, or people
Scale an unproven model
Compounding growth
Retention, referral, repeat purchase, expansion, reputation, and customer value
Focus only on new acquisition
The Decision Map helps you locate the decision before you fund the activity.
Who leads the work
Lorraine A
Founder & Principal Strategist
Lorraine built Qallann in 2018 on one operating principle: The diagnosis comes before the recommendation. Always.
Since then, she has applied that principle across more than 40 organisations in 12 African countries, including commercial, nonprofit, technology, legal, health, agricultural, and professional-services organisations.
Before Qallann, Lorraine spent eight years at Nestlé, moving from factory-level operations into regional marketing across 22 Sub-Saharan markets. Her work involved tracing visible problems through the systems behind them – using production data, supply-chain records, quality analysis, and cross-functional investigation to identify root causes rather than treating symptoms.
She later led the communications and marketing function for a global organisation operating across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, building systems designed to work beyond one person’s presence.
The Decision Map is led by Lorraine. It is not handed to a junior account-management team.
What happens after the map
The Decision Map is a diagnostic engagement. There is no obligation to hire Qallann for the work that follows. You may:
- Use the Decision Map to make the decision internally.
- Use it to align your leadership team, board, or investors.
- Use it to brief an existing team or supplier more clearly.
- Use it to pause, stop, or change an investment already being considered.
- Ask Qallann to scope the next piece of work.
- Engage another specialist if they are better placed to deliver the next move.
If the evidence points to a need for customer research, deeper commercial work, broader operational analysis, implementation support, or ongoing strategic leadership, we will say so clearly.
We do not quietly expand one decision into a bigger engagement. If a bigger engagement is justified, we explain why.
Is this the right starting point?
Buy a Decision Map if:
- You have one consequential decision in front of you.
- The cost of getting it wrong is meaningful.
- You are being asked to commit money, time, people, or leadership attention.
- Several explanations appear plausible.
- Different people in the organisation disagree about the problem.
- You have already tried things and cannot tell whether they failed because of execution, diagnosis, or a more upstream constraint.
- You are not convinced the proposed solution is solving the real issue.
- You are willing to change direction if the evidence contradicts your preferred answer.
- You want a clear next move - not more activity for its own sake.
Do not buy a Decision Map if:
- You have already decided what to do and want someone to justify it.
- You simply need execution.
- You want a broad, generic marketing audit.
- You want a list of tactics without examining the assumptions beneath them.
- The decision is too small to justify a KES 75,000 examination.
- You are unwilling to pause or change course if the evidence does not support your current plan.
- You have several interdependent commercial, operational, team, and growth problems rather than one decision.
One decision or a bigger problem?
YOUR SITUATION
Should you hire in your marketing team, rebrand, increase spend, stop a channel, appoint a supplier, change price, launch, or pursue this particular move?
YOUR SITUATION
You have several interconnected issues and cannot tell where the main constraint sits.
YOUR SITUATION
You know the direction but need ongoing senior commercial and marketing leadership.
Your Investment
KES 75,000
Included
- An intake review to confirm that the Decision Map is the appropriate starting point.
- Evidence review appropriate to the decision under examination.
- One 90-minute working session with the relevant people in your organisation.
- One concise written Decision Map within seven days.
- One 30-minute delivery readout to clarify the conclusion, answer questions about the document, and confirm the immediate next move.
Not Included
- Customer research, unless specifically scoped.
- A full commercial or marketing strategy.
- Detailed implementation planning.
- Campaign execution, design, website development, or recruitment.
- An Operational Momentum Review.
- Ongoing Marketing Leadership support.
The Decision Map is 100% self-contained. It is not a pitch deck for a retainer. If the solution requires internal operational fixes, we tell you. If you can fix it yourself without spending another shilling, we lay out the exact steps.
bring your decision to us
Bring us the decision before you commit
You do not need to know what is wrong before you begin. You need a decision important enough to examine properly.
Common questions about the Decision Map
What counts as one decision?
One decision is one commitment your organisation is trying to make.
For example:
- Should we replace our agency?
- Should we spend on a new website?
- Should we hire a sales lead?
- Should we increase our marketing budget?
- Should we stop this activity?
- Should we change our price?
- Should we launch this service?
- Should we enter this market?
- Should we rebrand?
“Fix our marketing” is not one decision. It is usually several connected problems.
What information will Qallann need from us?
That depends on the decision. We will ask only for evidence that could materially affect the conclusion.
It may include commercial, marketing, customer, operational, financial, team, performance, or strategic information. If you do not have the data needed to answer the question fully, we will identify what can responsibly be concluded and what needs to be established next.
What if our evidence is incomplete or contradictory?
That is often why the Decision Map is needed.
We will distinguish between what is known, what is assumed, what is contradicted, and what cannot yet be concluded. If the most responsible next move is to investigate one question further, your Decision Map will say so.
Who should take part?
The people who own the decision, hold relevant evidence, understand the operating reality, or will need to act on the conclusion.
Depending on the decision, this may include the CEO or founder, finance lead, sales lead, marketing lead, operations lead, business-unit lead, co-founder, or board representative.
We will advise on the right mix during intake.
Can we bring more than one problem?
You may bring the wider context, but the Decision Map is designed to examine one consequential decision.
If the issues are too interconnected to separate responsibly, we will recommend the Operational Momentum Review rather than force a broader systems problem into a one-decision engagement.
Can we use the map with our existing agency, consultant, or team?
Yes. The Decision Map belongs to you.
It may help you brief a supplier, assess an investment, challenge an assumption, decide what to stop, or align internal decision-makers. It is not written to attack an existing supplier; it is written to clarify what the evidence supports.
Will Qallann recommend further work?
Sometimes the examination may identify work that Qallann can help with. It may also show that you can act internally, need a different type of specialist or need to investigate something further first. The Decision Map is designed to be valuable regardless of what happens next.
Is there an obligation to work with Qallann afterwards?
No.
You may use the Decision Map however you choose. If you ask Qallann to support implementation, that work will be scoped separately only after the diagnosis establishes what is needed.