The REACH Method™
Hold
What Hold means
Building something is not the same as knowing whether it works. Hold is the stage where what was constructed is held up against what it was meant to do, and examined as honestly as the situation was examined at the start.
It is an evaluation, and it is the point at which the arc of the REACH Method returns to where it began: understanding what is actually happening.
What Hold examines
- Implementation
- Whether what was designed was actually put into practice - fully, partly, or differently than intended.
- Outcomes
- Stated as far as the evidence supports them and no further.
- Responsibility
- Where responsibility for each part of what was built now sits, and whether that is clear to the people carrying it.
- Continued attention or adjustment
- What has settled, what still requires attention or adjustment, and what the evidence says should change.
Why the method ends here
Work that is never evaluated cannot be improved, and a result that is never examined cannot honestly be claimed. Hold exists so that what was entrusted to a business owner can be stewarded with clarity, responsibility, and purpose - including when the finding is that something did not work as intended and needs to be reconsidered.
Hold is a stage of the method, worked at the depth an engagement's scope allows. It does not move responsibility for the business away from its owner; it makes plain where that responsibility rests.