strategy-skills

Culture assessment and monitoring with three modes — Diagnostic for a deep session surfacing the gap between declared culture and actual culture, Review for periodic check-ins on whether behavior is shifting, and Alert Triggers for setting tripwires around culture-strategy misalignment, regression, and integration risk. Not a culture change programme — a mirror. Updates company-context.md after every run. Triggers on questions about culture, values, team dynamics, how decisions really get made, why change efforts stall, merger integration, or whether the organisation can actually execute its strategy. Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

Continuous environmental scanning across six PESTEL categories — Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal. Not a one-time analysis but an ongoing radar. Three modes. Diagnostic mode runs a full scan and prioritises forces by impact, speed, and reversibility. Review mode checks the watch list monthly for movement and new signals. Alert mode defines concrete monitoring triggers for each top force. Use whenever someone wants to understand external forces acting on their business, assess macro risk, prepare for planning, or check whether the world has moved since last time they looked. Connects to the strategy map (forces act on the chain) and Wardley Map (forces drive component evolution). Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

First-principles strategy — strip away conventional assumptions and find the theoretical maximum for your business. Three modes. Diagnostic mode runs a full session (45+ min) to define your theoretical maximum, map the gap honestly, classify constraints, invert for failure modes, set strategic intent, and work backwards to your first intervention. Review mode (15-20 min) checks whether your theoretical maximum has shifted, whether the gap has changed, and whether you're still climbing the right peak. Alert mode defines constraint-shift, peak-shift, and local-peak triggers that tell you when to reassess. Use when someone is stuck optimising incrementally, when conventional wisdom is driving strategy, when a new technology or regulation changes what's physically possible, or when you suspect the business is climbing a local peak. Integrates with company-context.md. Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

Competitive positioning diagnostic — figures out where you actually stand relative to competitors and whether that position is defensible. Use this skill when someone needs to understand their real competitive position (not the one on the slide deck), when a new competitor has entered the market, when customers are switching and nobody can explain why, when pricing power is eroding, when a strategic investment depends on knowing whether the moat is real, or when leadership says "we're differentiated" but can't explain how. Draws on Playing to Win, Porter's generic strategies, and Blue Ocean thinking — applied as diagnosis, not planning. Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

Strategy cascade based on Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley's Playing to Win framework. Five interconnected choices that define a real strategy — not a vision statement, not a list of priorities, not a strategic plan that's really just a budget with adjectives. Runs in three modes — Diagnostic for building or rebuilding the full cascade, Review for pressure-testing an existing one, and Alert Triggers for defining the tripwires that tell you the cascade is breaking. Updates company-context.md after every run. Triggers on questions about strategy, strategic choices, winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, competitive strategy, or when someone says "we need a strategy" and means it. Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

Stress-test plans before committing by imagining they've already failed. Three modes. Diagnostic mode runs a full pre-mortem session — vivid failure scene-setting, six failure categories, the monkey test, and concrete plan adjustments. Review mode checks previous findings monthly for changed probabilities and new failure modes. Alert Triggers mode defines and monitors early warning signals across four trigger categories. Use before any major commitment — strategy, investment, product launch, partnership — or regularly to keep assumptions honest. The planning fallacy is real. The spreadsheet looked great so everyone stopped thinking. This is the antidote. Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

Track Two / internal innovation system for running small, fast experiments outside the core business. Runs in three modes — Diagnostic for designing the full Protoloop from scratch (intake channels, loop structure, team, exit paths), Review for running the monthly heartbeat meeting (loop-by-loop decisions, forward-loading, portfolio health), and Alert Triggers for defining tripwires that protect, feed, and maintain momentum in the system. Updates company-context.md after every run. Triggers on questions about innovation pipelines, intrapreneurship, Track Two strategy, experimentation systems, handling ideas that don't fit the core business, or building systematic exploration alongside exploitation. Based on 20 years of practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

The Eterdis Strategy Diagnostic — an AI-guided conversation that helps leadership teams understand their strategic situation before committing to a direction. This is the entry point skill. It runs an open-ended discovery conversation, detects which strategic frameworks are most relevant, and produces a strategy-ready brief. Use this skill when someone asks for a general strategic assessment, when they don't know which framework they need, when they want to "figure out where we stand," or when they're preparing for a strategy engagement. This skill orchestrates other Eterdis skills — it does not replace them. Triggers on: "help me think through our strategy," "where should we start," "we need to figure out what's going on," "strategic health check," "prepare for a strategy review," or any open-ended request for strategic thinking. Based on 20 years of consulting practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

Strategy map analysis using the Eterdis two-directional causal chain. Use this skill to diagnose whether strategy is coherent by building two chains — bottom-up from resources to results, top-down from expectations to requirements — and finding where they don't connect. Runs in three modes — full diagnostic for deep sessions, review mode for quick re-assessment, and alert triggers for early-warning signals. Updates company-context.md after every run. Triggers on questions about strategic alignment, why the strategy isn't working, what to invest in, how the business creates value, whether the plan is realistic, or where the biggest gap is. Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

VRIO resource analysis combined with Dynamic Capabilities assessment. Use this skill to identify real competitive advantages (Barney VRIO framework), then test whether the organisation can sense new opportunities, seize them, and transform itself to stay ahead (Teece dynamic capabilities). Runs in three modes — full diagnostic for deep first-use sessions, review mode for quick re-assessment, and alert triggers for defining early-warning signals. Updates company-context.md after every run. Triggers on questions about competitive advantage, defensibility, resource assessment, why competitors are gaining ground, organisational agility, or whether advantages will hold. Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).

Wardley Mapping for strategic positioning — map your value chain from customer need to underlying components, plot where each component sits on the evolution curve (novel to commodity), and spot the strategic plays that movement creates. Use this skill when someone wants to understand where their industry is heading, whether they're building things they should be buying, where competitors are vulnerable, what's about to become commoditised, or why their competitive advantage is eroding. Triggers on questions about build-vs-buy, component evolution, value chain analysis, commoditisation risk, or strategic positioning relative to market movement. Three modes — full diagnostic (build a map from scratch), review (update positions and reassess), and alert triggers (set tripwires for when components move). Based on practice by Eterdis (eterdis.com).