Groundworks is a research backed team assessment built for every kind of working team. Project teams, function teams and product teams all benefit from knowing where they stand.
24 questions. AI powered insight. Practical action.
Most team assessments were built for leadership teams, with high stakes and high budgets. Working teams don't have that luxury.
And traditional team coaching doesn't help much either. It's complex to run, expensive to sustain, and slow to land, addressing a problem that's already changed shape by the time the report arrives.
Groundworks asks the right questions, lets AI do the analysis, and puts the team leader in the driver's seat. Development is built into the work your team is already doing, not bolted on beside it.
A Stanford study of 95 teams found three in four missed most of their goals on budget, schedule, specification, customer expectations and company alignment (Behnam Tabrizi, Harvard Business Review, 2015). That's performance and speed waiting to be unlocked.
Grounded in research from leading thinkers on teams. Edmondson, Hackman, Lencioni, Google's Project Aristotle, and more, translated into practical measurement.
The whole team is heard in under ten minutes. AI turns their responses into an honest team portrait, without the bottleneck of a consultant.
Groundworks is self administered. Set it up, share the link, and the AI does the heavy analytical work.
Describe your team in your own words: which team, what work, and the period people should answer about. Add a private note on the challenges you're facing. That context makes the report yours.
24 questions, 8 to 10 minutes. Fully anonymous: no names, no emails, no accounts. Share one link, and it works on any phone.
The AI reads your data holistically, not just the lowest scores. It identifies patterns a fixed algorithm would miss.
The Drills are short, structured team exercises tied directly to your results. The team runs them inside meetings it's already having. No extra sessions.
Want help getting started? One to one support is available for team leaders who want to get up to speed running drills. It's a paid extra: email info@grdwrks.app to ask.
High performance is not built on one thing. The eight domains sit in three layers: Individual Experience is the foundation, Collective Behaviour builds on it, and Beyond the Team sits at the top. The best teams are consistently solid across all eight, not exceptional at two or three.
Understanding stakeholders, communicating direction, and adapting your approach to the wider organisation.
Knowing which teams you depend on, building relationships across the organisation, and resolving tensions before they become blockers.
Decisions, information flow, and escalating blockers early. How well the team executes together.
Learning honestly, spotting change early, anticipating what comes next, and making a habit of marking success.
Realistic planning, consistent progress review, and quality decisions under pressure.
Psychological safety. Speaking up, challenging ideas, and disagreeing constructively without it becoming personal.
Recovery, workload and being looked after. The foundation that makes everything else possible over time.
Shared expectations, understanding each other's roles, and real accountability to agreed commitments.
Edmondson on psychological safety. Hackman on enabling conditions. Google's Project Aristotle. Lencioni on dysfunction. Argyris on learning. All of it translated into 24 actionable questions your team can answer in 10 minutes.
Two teams with identical average scores can tell completely different stories. The Groundworks AI reads your full dataset the way a skilled OD practitioner would: holistically, not mechanically.
Low Trust and low Wellbeing often signal the same underlying problem. The AI surfaces those connections instead of listing scores independently.
You set the context before the survey opens: which team, which work, which period people should answer about, plus an optional private note the team never sees. That context shapes the report alongside the answers, so a scaling tech team gets different insight than a mature professional services team, even at the same score.
Not just what to work on, but what to fix first, because some foundations create the conditions for others to improve.
The Groundworks Report to share with everyone: one version to read, one for the screen in the room. Plus a one page list of the drills the team runs next.
Drills are short, structured exercises that teams run for themselves, inside meetings they're already having. They give the team leader a structure that creates lightbulb moments and builds cohesion. With practice, they drive performance and engagement across the team.
A shared view in a few minutes. Use as a meeting opener or closer to surface how the team is experiencing something right now.
A real situation, a shared exploration, and one named commitment. Enough time to go deeper without derailing the agenda.
Mixed pairs, structured reflection, and a personal takeaway that changes how team members show up. For when the team is ready to go further.
Six weeks in order, one drill a week, plus three extras for when the moment calls for them. Each drill targets a question the survey flagged, with that question's score beside it, so the team can see why it is doing what it is doing.
Every Drill is generated from your team's actual scores and context, not generic prompts. The team sees the connection between what the data showed and what they're doing about it.
Team make up and context change often. Groundworks lets you assess a team as many times as you like, so you get a fresh view every time, without building your own measurement infrastructure.
Self administered by the team. You don't need to be in the room for data collection. The AI handles the analysis. You focus on the conversation.
Built for working teams, not boardrooms. The framework is designed for project teams, delivery squads and product teams: real outputs, real time pressure, the clients who need it most.
A credible evidential base. Grounded in research from leading thinkers on teams, something to stand behind in client conversations and proposals.
Ready for the room. Every survey produces the Groundworks Report, one version to read and one for the screen in the room, plus a one page list of the drills the team runs next.
Scores for all eight domains, with how answers spread, not just averages
The top five and bottom five questions: what is working and what is holding the team back
Polarising questions: where the team splits. A middling average can hide two groups having very different experiences, and that split is often the most useful conversation in the room
A score for every one of the 24 questions
Priority recommendations and the Drills the team would run first
All of it fully anonymous: team level results only, never one person's answers
The questions team leaders and coaches ask us before running a Groundworks assessment, answered up front.
Yes. Groundworks never collects names, emails, or any other identifying information from respondents. No individual answer can be traced back to a person, and only team level results are ever shown, never one person's response on its own.
Responses are analysed using Claude, an AI model from Anthropic (a US company), to identify patterns in how the team works together. Data is processed in accordance with Anthropic's privacy policy and standard safeguards for international data transfers, including Standard Contractual Clauses.
Individual responses are combined into a team level report and never reported or shown on their own. Responses are kept indefinitely and used, in aggregate with other teams, to build benchmarks over time.
In anonymised and aggregated form, yes: with academic researchers studying team dynamics, which may include published research. No individual, team, or organisation is ever identified in that sharing.
Because nothing links an answer to a person, once a response is submitted it can't be found or withdrawn individually. Taking part is voluntary throughout: anyone can skip a question they'd rather not answer.
John Maxwell, info@grdwrks.app, answers every question about how this data is used.
Every respondent sees this same information again, in full, before they can start the survey.
Read every page of a sample Groundworks Report and its drills, straight away. The team is invented, a twenty partner consulting practice running hot. Pop your email in and the PDF opens.
Team performance, clearly understood.
What's working, what's not, and what to do first.
Open the sample reportWe'll only use your email to follow up about Groundworks. Questions? Write to info@grdwrks.app, we read every one.