Contracts are an indispensable tool in relationships. They provide crucial legal and operational detail.

However, there’s an increasing awareness of the limitations of contracts.

For starters, they usually aren’t easy to understand for ‘non-legal’ people, leading to practical challenges and conflicting interpretations.

Even more fundamentally though, contracts can’t capture and help manage the crucial subjective ‘Things That Matter’, which primarily determine the success of the relationship.

Contracts can’t anticipate or respond quickly to unexpected developments, which creates gaps and a rush to try and renegotiate or redefine terms.

This typically means that contracts are of limited practical use at the front line – especially where quick decisions are needed.

Except in the most straightforward and transactional relationships, contracts are therefore not fit for purpose – especially on their own and as currently used.

This is where the ‘Contractual Relationship Diagnostic’ comes in.

It focuses attention on critical areas that contracts cannot adequately cover (if at all), as a first step to effectively widening the focus of ‘relationship management’, beyond the Contract.

The diagnostic contains the most common areas that make a difference to the relationship, but which are least effectively covered by contracts.

They are grouped into four sections, starting with the value of the relationship, and working through to relationship outcomes.

For each area, evaluate which statement best describes the status of the relationship.

Capture your evaluations by moving the slider bars.

Use the comments fields to explain these evaluations. Where an area is failing or struggling, please describe why and how it occurs, and what that looks like in practice.

Your evaluation will be automatically saved every few minutes.

If you need to leave before completing it, click the “Save” button. You can return to the diagnostic later by clicking the link in your invitation email.

Click “Save” and then “Submit” to complete the process. You will then be able to access your report.