Bring due diligence to the people process.

Our comprehensive assessment

Since 1993, Bruce Tulgan and RainmakerThinking have helped organizations identify personnel risks, issues, and opportunities using our comprehensive assessment process.

We help you…

  • avoid critical mistakes
  • make much better decisions much faster
  • and overall enhance due diligence

…when it comes to personnel and organizational structure.

As a turn-around CEO, I have relied on RainmakerThinking to evaluate talent, as an early indicator of risks, to build high-potential individuals, improve cross-functional communication and execution, reduce turnover, meaningfully accelerate timelines, grow revenue and improve profitability.

Geoffrey Crouse, CEO, Candela Medical

“Bruce quickly grasps employees’ motivations and their capacity to perform and develops solutions for creating positive change.”

Craig Anderson, CFO, Operation Smile;
CFO, HJF for the Advancement of Military Medicine (1993-2017)

Step 1. Situation analysis and recommended plan of action

We start by understanding your objectives, so we can align our process with your needs. Next, our team will conduct a series of initial one-on-one interviews with key decision-makers, and request and review available documentation you are able to provide.

Based on this initial intake process, we provide:

  • Recommended assessment options,
  • Projected ROI,
  • Recommended next steps, timing, and costs.

We will help you develop a custom solution for your particular personnel needs.

Step 2. Assess human-factor issues, risks, opportunities, and options

We work with your team, virtually or in-person, to swiftly gather data using 4 primary tools of inquiry:

  1. Strategic employee opinion surveys
  2. Focus group discussions
  3. One-on-one interviews
  4. Ongoing dialogues with key individuals
Step 3. Comprehensive report and briefings

Based on all qualitative and quantitative data gathered, we develop and deliver comprehensive written reports, accompanied by:

  • Briefings
  • Advisory sessions
  • Executive coaching

For a deeper dive, we can prepare a comprehensive talent dossier, profiling:

  • High-potentials,
  • Bench-strength, and
  • Performance gaps from C-level to the front lines.

We give you a full picture of the human risks and opportunities within your organization.

Step 4. Ongoing support

Following our initial analysis and report, we may also provide ongoing leadership training, executive coaching, and organizational development at all levels.

“I was fortunate to work with Bruce Tulgan during the transformation of the U.S. Army after the Cold War. He is truly indispensable to the change process!”

Dennis J. Reimer, General, U.S. Army (Ret.),
Chief of Staff of the United States Army (1995-99)

Click here to download case examples.

Full redacted work samples available upon request.

“Bruce and his team helped our company to analyze the organizational risks after a recent acquisition in May 2020. His very detailed analysis and strategic advice gave us a head start, which allowed us to adapt and make strategic decisions quickly.”

Anne Anderton Warren, EVP & CHRO, Mid-Kansas Cooperative

Avoid The Costs of Personnel Mistakes


Hiring mistakes:
  • Placing the wrong people in key roles
  • Leaving key positions open for way too long
  • Over-relying on headhunters (who fail to secure the quality candidates you need)
Increased turnover:
  • Losing high-value talent
  • Chronically low morale, especially among high-performers, due to low-performers, change-resisters, and troublemakers being left in place
  • People throughout the organization believing nobody knows about their wants and needs, or even worse…nobody cares
Missed opportunities:
  • Failing to anticipate human friction in structural changes, making transition that much more difficult for everyone
  • Delayed implementation of improvements which could make things smarter, faster, and better for everybody
  • Overlooking amazing talent ripe for more responsibility, already within your organization

About Bruce Tulgan

Bruce Tulgan
Founder & CEO

Bruce Tulgan is internationally recognized as the leading expert on young people in the workplace and one of the leading experts on leadership and management. Bruce is a best-selling author of twenty-one books, an adviser to business leaders all over the world, and a sought-after keynote speaker and management trainer.

Since 1993, Bruce has worked with tens of thousands of leaders and managers in hundreds of organizations ranging from Aetna to Wal-Mart; from the Army to the YMCA.

Bruce is the author or co-author of 21 books, including his best-selling It’s Okay to Be the Boss, the classic Managing Generation X, his popular Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage the Millennials, and The 27 Challenges Managers Face: Step-by-step Solutions to (Nearly) All of Your Management Problems. His newest book, The Art of Being Indispensable at Work, is available now from Harvard Business Review Press.

Bruce is a lifelong practitioner of Okinawan Uechi Ryu Karate Do and holds a seventh degree black belt, making him a Kyoshi master in that style. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Debby Applegate, Ph.D., who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for her book The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. Her new book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, is available now from Doubleday.

Email Bruce

Maybe you could do this yourself… But will you?


Our team of objective third-party experts are already great at conducting deep dive investigative assessments very well, very fast.

“I hired Bruce Tulgan to assist me and my leadership team when I commanded the US Air Force’s premier Special Operations Combat Wing. He provided invaluable analysis and advice to help us understand the risks and opportunities tied to our most pressing strategic human issues in our workforce.”

Greg Lengyel, Major General, U.S. Air Force (Ret.),
Deputy Commanding General U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (2016-2018)