Groundworks is a research backed performance assessment built for working teams. Project teams, delivery squads, product teams: the people with clear deliverables and no time to waste. 24 questions. AI powered insight. Practical action.
Most team diagnostics were built for leadership teams: high stakes, high budget, time to spare. 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 built into the work your team is already doing, not bolted on beside it.
Harvard Business Review research on performance across industry sectors.
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.
Name the team, add context about your industry and challenge. This shapes the AI report.
24 questions, 8 to 10 minutes. Anonymous responses, mobile friendly. Share a link. No accounts needed for participants.
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.
The team rates each Drill as it runs, and that feedback flows back into the next round. The picture updates as the team changes, instead of sitting still until the next big diagnostic.
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 External Relationships sit 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.
Cross team dependencies, external relationships, and resolving tensions before they become blockers.
Read top to bottom: external relationships rest on collective behaviours, which rest on individual experience.
Decisions, information flow, and escalating blockers early. How well the team executes together.
Learning honestly, spotting change early, and anticipating rather than reacting to what comes next.
Realistic planning, consistent progress review, and quality decisions under pressure.
Psychological safety. Speaking up, challenging ideas, and disagreeing constructively without it becoming personal.
Individual wellbeing and workload. 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 Sustainability often signal the same underlying problem. The AI surfaces those connections instead of listing scores independently.
Industry, team challenge, and your framing prompt are passed directly to the AI. 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.
A Team report to share with everyone, a Team Leader's Insights report for the person running the team, and a Coach Insights report for the practitioner in the room. Each one stands on its own.
"The Connection score is the priority, but it is not isolated. Low Trust and low Mindset scores suggest the team is not yet creating the conditions for those external relationships to improve. Address Trust first."
Drills are short, structured exercises that teams run for themselves, inside meetings they're already having. No facilitator. No separate sessions. They create lightbulb moments, drive lasting behaviour change, and build the cohesion, performance and engagement that show up in the next round of results.
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.
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.
Groundworks gives coaches and OD practitioners a research-backed diagnostic they can deploy immediately, without building their 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.
Debrief support built in. Three standalone reports generated automatically: a Team report to share, a Team Leader's Insights report, and a Coach Insights report for your coaching conversation.
Domain scores across all eight foundations with distribution, not just averages
The full AI narrative reading the data the way a practitioner would
Priority recommendations and the Drills the team would run first
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.
Whether you're a coach, an OD consultant, a team leader or a project manager, sign up to receive a sample debrief report and see how Groundworks can help your teams. You'll get the full AI narrative, domain scores, and priority recommendations: exactly what your team would see.
Or email us directly at info@grdwrks.app and we read every one.