Official skill · Strategy
Strategy style for your environment
Rates each business unit's environment on predictability, malleability, and harshness, picks one of five strategy styles, and lists the planning changes that style needs. Use it when the annual plan goes stale long before the year ends.
AI skill
Have your AI match your strategy style to your market
14 days free · No card needed
Works in Claude, ChatGPT, and coding agents. On Team and Business, the official skill in your pod updates itself when we improve it.
When to use it
- The annual plan goes stale long before the year ends
- Units in different markets share one planning process
- Leaders argue about planning versus experimenting
What you give it
- The business units to assess
- Evidence on forecast accuracy and market change
- Evidence on your influence over the market
- Cash runway and margin trend
- How you plan and budget today
What you get
An environment diagnosis with evidence, a style per unit (classical, adaptive, visionary, shaping, renewal), and concrete changes to planning practice.
How it works
- List the units
- Check harshness first
- Rate predictability with evidence
- Rate malleability with evidence
- Map each unit to a style
- Name the mismatch
- Say what to change in planning practice
- Decide how to run several styles at once
- End with decisions and next actions
Example
What you give it
We're a 60-person company. Unit A: payroll software for Japanese clinics, 11 years old, about 900 customers, churn steady at about 1% a month, revenue forecast within 5% each of the last four years. Two competitors, both bigger. Unit B: a new AI scheduling assistant for clinics, launched 8 months ago, 40 paying clinics, our forecasts for it have been off by 50% or more every quarter, at least six startups launched similar tools this year, no standard yet for how scheduling tools connect to clinic records. Cash: 22 months of runway at current burn. We run one annual plan in January for both units, with fixed budgets per team.
What you get back (the start of it)
Strategy style: payroll (A) and AI scheduling (B)
Date: [date] · Prepared for: leadership team
Summary
Unit A fits a classical style: plan for scale and efficiency. Unit B fits an adaptive style now, with a shaping option if the company can lead an open way for scheduling tools to connect to clinic records. The biggest change: take Unit B out of the January plan and fund it in short stages tied to experiments.
Environment diagnosis
| Unit | Harshness | Predictability | Malleability | Style | Runner-up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A: clinic payroll | 22 months runway; steady churn → Low | Forecasts within 5% for 4 years; 2 stable rivals → High | Mature niche, both rivals larger → Low | Classical: be big | none |
| B: AI scheduling | Same runway, but B burns cash [check: B's share of burn] → Medium | Forecasts off by 50%+ each quarter; 6+ new entrants this year → Low | No connection standard yet and the market is 8 months old, so the market could be changed, but 40 clinics give B little influence [check: partners willing to join] → Low (borderline) | Adaptive: be fast | Shaping: be the orchestrator |
The rest of this output, the full steps and the checks the AI runs before it answers are in your pod once you add the skill.
Use this skill in your AIShare it with your team
Add it to an AI Skill Pod and everyone on the team, contractors included, uses the same version from their own AI. Read the best ways to share AI skills with a team
Changelog
- v1.0.1 · · Example: Unit B's malleability is rated Low (borderline), since 40 clinics give it little influence, so step 5 gives Adaptive with Shaping as runner-up.
- v1.0.0 · · First release.
Sources
- Your Strategy Needs a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach - Harvard Business Review Press (read 2026-11-04)
- Strategy Palette: Be Big, Be Fast, Be First, Be the Orchestrator, Be Viable - BCG (read 2026-11-04)
- Your Strategy Needs a Strategy - Harvard Business Review, September 2012 (read 2026-11-04)
- Why Strategy Needs a Strategy - Martin Reeves, Michael Deimler, Claire Love, BCG, January 2012 (read 2026-11-04)
- The Strategy Palette - BCG (read 2026-11-04)
- Renewal Strategy - BCG (read 2026-11-04)