When you compare a Pulse check-in to your prior OHB (Organizational Health Baseline), you may notice something that looks like a contradiction: individual category scores go up, but the overall score goes down, or the reverse. This is not an error. It reflects how the two assessments are built and how the comparison is calculated.

Your OHB is a full diagnostic, built from a complete set of statements across every category. A Pulse check-in is shorter by design, focused on a smaller, targeted set of statements, often a subset of what appeared in the original OHB. Because each statement in a category carries equal weight within its own assessment, a category measured with fewer statements gives each one more influence on the result. That is why a Pulse category score can shift more sharply than the same category did in the fuller OHB.

The overall score follows a simple rule: current overall score minus previous overall score, with each number calculated from everything included in its own assessment, not from a shared subset. For example, an OHB covering twenty statements produces an overall score of 82. The next Pulse check-in, covering five of those twenty statements, produces an overall score of 79. The reported delta is negative three, even if all five statements individually improved against their own history. The platform does not recalculate the OHB using only the overlapping statements before taking the difference, so the categories you see and the overall delta can point in different directions.

The most reliable comparison is at the statement question level. Any statement fixed answer question that appeared in both the OHB and the Pulse check-in gives you a direct, like-for-like read with no adjustment needed, and it is often a richer signal than the aggregate score. Treat the overall delta as context rather than a verdict: it reflects your current snapshot against your full original baseline, not the same set of questions. When sharing results with your team or board, it helps to note that the two assessments covered a different number of statements.