Library skill · Thinkers' principles

Matsushita-style dam management check

v1.0.1 · Updated 4 November 2026

Checks the reserve your business holds in cash, equipment, people, stock, technology and products, against the dam management Konosuke Matsushita described, and says where to build it. Use it when you want to know how long the business could ride out a bad season.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Konosuke Matsushita or their companies. About these principles: Konosuke Matsushita's ideas, explained.

Works in Claude, ChatGPT, and coding agents. On Team and Business, this library skill in your pod updates itself when we improve it.

When to use it

• You want to know how long the business could ride out a bad season
• Things are going well and you want to prepare for a downturn

What you give it

• What you hold in each area today
• Normal and worst-month usage
• Monthly revenue and fixed costs
• What is changing

What you get

A table of reserves by area (cover, planned or accidental, reserve or waste), a bad-season walk-through, and build, hold or release recommendations with their cost.

How it works

1. List the areas One row per area. Drop one only if the user says it doesn't apply (a software company with no stock skips inventory).
2. Measure the reserve in each Express it as cover: months of fixed costs in cash, weeks of stock at normal sales, spare hours of team capacity, a backup supplier or machine, a second person who can do a key job, products in development that could sell if the main one weakens.
3. Ask whether it is planned (principle 1) Is the level chosen from an outlook ("we hold four months because our worst quarter dropped 30%"), or did it just happen? Unplanned reserve can be too small or idle money.
4. Separate reserve from waste A reserve has a job in a bad month; idle stock nobody will buy, or a role nobody needs, is not a reserve. Mark each.
5. Test a bad season (principle 3) Take the worst month from the input, or a stated scenario, and walk it through each area. Where does the business run dry first, and when?
6. Recommend Per area: build, hold, or release, with the size and the first step. Building reserve usually starts in good months (principle 2): name the share of this month's profit or hours to set aside.
7. Name the cost Reserve has a cost (cash not invested, stock carrying cost, spare hours). State it beside each recommendation so the trade-off is visible.

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Changelog

• v1.0.1 · 4 November 2026 · Example output now opens with the attribution and not-affiliated lines, as the skill's own checks require. The reserves table now covers all six areas: Technology is added as not in the input.
• v1.0.0 · 4 November 2026 · First release.