Ground Truth Consultancy

When the decision carries weight, clarity matters.Ground Truth Consultancy helps leaders and organizations test consequential decisions before commitment — before changing course becomes materially more costly.The work is for decisions being made under pressure, uncertainty, structural conflict, public consequence, or the new demands created by success. It focuses on the decision itself: what is being decided, who owns it, who bears the consequences if it succeeds or fails, what assumptions are carrying it, where it could break, and what would require the decision to be revisited.This is not general strategy support.
This is decision support before commitment.

Who this is for
This work is for leaders and organizations facing a decision that is expensive to get wrong and hard to undo. That can look like:
• you know the decision in front of
• you, but something underneath it is not working
• the decision is clear on paper, but its consequences are harder to see
• people are moving toward agreement, but important concerns are still being softened or avoided
• the timeline feels urgent, but you are not sure the urgency is real
• the easier-to-explain path is not always the stronger one
• you know who benefits, but are less certain who bears the cost
• something has worked, and you now need to decide whether to scale it, replicate it, invest further, or deliberately keep it bounded
• the decision affects money, trust, reputation, people, public commitments, or future options
• you already have a direction in mind, and want to know whether it survives scrutiny — even if the answer is no

Decision Audit
A structured engagement focused on a single live decision.It begins with a brief orientation call to confirm fit. If the decision is appropriate for an Audit, the engagement includes one main working session, followed by a written Decision Brief and a limited follow-up window for clarification.The work examines what is being decided, who owns the decision, who bears its consequences, what assumptions are carrying the preferred path, where the decision could break, and what conditions would require revisiting it.The Decision Brief is not a transcript or a recap. It is a written decision record: a document that preserves the reasoning, assumptions, risks, and trigger conditions clearly enough to revisit later.Clarity that disappears was never clarity.

Examples of supported decisionsGround Truth Consultancy may be useful when deciding:• whether to launch, pause, redesign, or sunset a major initiative;
• whether to make a public commitment before internal alignment is stable;
• whether a proposed strategy is solving the right problem;
• whether to scale, replicate, fund differently, or deliberately keep bounded something that is already working;
• whether a partnership, hire, funding choice, or structural change carries hidden commitment risk;
• whether leadership is reacting to pressure rather than deciding from clarity;

What this is - and is notThis practice focuses specifically on decision structure and judgment before commitment.It is not:• coaching;
• therapy;
• motivation work;
• implementation consulting;
• general facilitation;
• open-ended strategy support.The decision stays yours.My role is to help clarify what is clear, what is uncertain, what is assumed, what is structurally vulnerable, and what remains open.After the Decision Brief, a limited follow-up window is available for clarification. From there, the decision and its execution remain with you.

About
Ground Truth Consultancy is led by Shaunda Scruggs, DrPH. Her work has included public health systems, equity-centered evaluation, federal program strategy, and institutional decision environments where consequential choices had to be examined across evidence, governance, competing interests, resource constraints, and public consequence.The practice grows out of that work: structured scrutiny of consequential decisions before commitment.

Contact
Initial inquiries are handled by email. When reaching out, briefly describe:• the decision you are facing;
• why it matters now;
• who owns or shapes the decision;
• and what makes the decision difficult.[email protected]