What are the 10 HQ Score dimensions?

The HQ Score measures operational maturity across 10 dimensions. Each dimension has its own page in the Headroom HQ website with detailed explanations of what each dimension means and the specific resources most relevant to each dimension.

D01 — Process Documentation Coverage

It measures whether your critical operational processes are documented in a form that any qualified person could follow and execute independently without asking anyone for guidance. 

The diagnostic question: Could a new hire use your documentation to complete your three most important processes on their first day?

D02 — Key Person Redundancy

It measures whether your operation has genuine cross-training and backup coverage for its most operationally critical roles. 

The diagnostic question: If your most critical person were unavailable for two weeks starting tomorrow, which specific processes would fail and who would execute them?

D03 — Vendor Contract Quality

It measures whether your vendor contracts protect your operational and commercial interests at the clause level that matters when performance or payments are disputed. 

The diagnostic question: In your three most critical vendor contracts, who bears the financial risk if the vendor underperforms against the agreed SLA?

D04 — Team Structure Clarity

It measures whether every person on your operations team has a clear, written understanding of which decisions fall within their authority to make independently versus which require escalation. 

The diagnostic question: If you asked three different team members what decision authority they each have, would they give consistent answers?

D05 — Measurement Sophistication

It measures whether your operational dashboard includes leading indicators that allow you to act before problems compound or only lagging financial metrics that confirm what has already happened. 

The diagnostic question: Which metric in your current dashboard would have given you 30 days' warning before your last significant operational problem?

D06 — Technology Coherence

It measures whether your technology stack is the result of deliberate architectural decisions aligned to your operational requirements or has accumulated through ad hoc problem-solving that left gaps, redundancies, and unplanned dependencies. 

The diagnostic question: Can you describe in one sentence the architectural principle that governs which tools you add and which you avoid?

D07 — Decision Rights Clarity

It measures whether decision authority in your organization is explicitly documented at the dimension-specific level or whether significant decisions require an informal negotiation about who actually has the authority to make them. 

The diagnostic question: For the five decisions your team escalates most frequently, is the authority boundary for each one documented in writing?

D08 — Meeting Design Quality

It measures whether your operational meetings consistently produce documented decisions with named owners and observable completion standards, or primarily produce shared awareness and status updates. 

The diagnostic question: In your last four recurring operational meetings, how many named decisions with named owners and specific completion definitions did each meeting produce?

D09 — Onboarding Effectiveness

It measures whether your onboarding architecture brings a new operations hire to independent execution within a defined and measurable timeframe, or whether ramp time depends entirely on which experienced team member happens to be available. 

The diagnostic question: How many days did your last operations hire take to complete their first task independently, without asking anyone for help?

D10 — Operational Leverage

It measures whether your operational costs are growing more slowly than your revenue and whether you have a documented, board-ready calculation of that relationship. 

The diagnostic question: What is your trailing 12-month operational cost growth rate divided by your revenue growth rate, and when did you last calculate it?

Related articles: 

• What is the HQ Score assessment?
• How do I take the HQ Score assessment?