| name | 3c-snapshot |
| description | Runs a fast Company / Customer / Competitor scan of a business and forces the intersections to surface the real strategic opening. Use this skill whenever the user needs a quick situational read before a decision, says "give me a 3C", "size up this business", "what's our right to win", "who are we and who are we up against", or is writing background analysis that risks being three disconnected paragraphs. Trigger it whenever someone needs to understand a company's strategic position quickly, even if they don't name the 3Cs. Its whole value is the intersection, not the three descriptions.
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3C Snapshot
Before any strategic decision there are three things you should know cold: what your organisation
genuinely does well and where it's constrained, what your customers are actually trying to
accomplish, and where competitors are strong and vulnerable. Miss any one and your strategy will be
off no matter how good the other two are.
But the trap is writing three separate paragraphs and calling it strategy. That is a background
document. The strategy lives in the intersections.
The method
If the business is a real, named company, search the web for current facts first — recent results,
competitor moves, pricing, customer commentary — rather than writing the three Cs from memory. A 3C
built on stale facts is confidently wrong in all three columns. Date-stamp the snapshot, because it
ages fast.
Build three honest views:
- Company — real strengths and real constraints. Not the brochure version.
- Customer — what they're actually trying to get done, not what they say they want.
- Competitor — where each rival is positioned, strong, and exposed.
Then force the intersections, because that is where the insight is:
- Where do our genuine strengths meet an underserved customer need?
- Where are competitors failing customers in a way we can exploit cheaply or quickly?
The place where your strength meets an unmet need that competitors can't easily serve is your right
to win. That single sentence is what turns a background scan into a strategic argument.
Output format
- Company / Customer / Competitor: a tight, honest paragraph each.
- The intersection: one or two sentences naming the right to win, or the tension, that the three
Cs reveal together.
- As-at date: the date of the snapshot, so a reader knows how fresh it is.
How to run it
Default to producing the snapshot: all three Cs plus the intersection, never omitting the
intersection. Switch to coaching when the user signals they want the practice: ask them to draft the
three Cs and then find the intersection themselves; most people stop at the three descriptions, and
pushing them to the intersection is the whole lesson.
Where this breaks
The 3Cs are a snapshot, so they miss anything moving fast: a competitor about to launch, a customer
need that is shifting, a regulatory change reshaping the market. Pair it with a forward-looking scan
when timing matters. The framework is also only as honest as the Company view; a flattering
self-assessment quietly poisons the whole analysis, so push hardest there.
Style
Plain language, no em dashes, short paragraphs. The three Cs are a means to the intersection, not the
output.
