| name | recovery-play-design |
| description | Design red-flag intervention sequences — root-cause diagnostic before remedy (4 parallel hypotheses), time-bound recovery plan with measurable 30/60/90-day signal targets, escalation criteria (PSM → success leadership → exec sponsor → counsel → churn-prep), the "is this recoverable?" rule, churn-prep workflow when not, and the post-recovery learning capture. Reach for this skill when a partner trips red on the health score, when a renewal is at clear risk, or when a partner has signaled dissatisfaction. Used by `success-playbook-designer` (primary) + `edtech-partner-success-manager`. |
Skill: recovery-play-design
Invoked by: success-playbook-designer (primary — when authoring or refreshing the firm's recovery plays), edtech-partner-success-manager (when executing recovery on a specific partner).
When to invoke: when a partner trips red on the composite health score OR fires an independent red-flag trigger; when a renewal is at clear risk; when a partner has signaled dissatisfaction (explicit complaint, vendor-comparison signal, escalation); when designing the firm's recovery playbook.
Output: a time-bound, measurable recovery plan with named escalation criteria, OR a churn-prep workflow if the situation isn't recoverable, AND a post-recovery learning capture for the play library.
The core opinion this skill encodes
Diagnose before treat. The most common recovery-play failure mode is offering a remedy (price relief, executive escalation, success-team intensification) before understanding which of the four parallel hypotheses is actually driving the red flag. The wrong remedy on the right diagnosis is bad; any remedy on a misdiagnosis is worse — it consumes goodwill, signals desperation, and doesn't fix the actual cause.
Second core opinion: time-bound or it's not a plan. "We'll improve engagement" is not a recovery plan. "Active-user count returns to 60% by Day 30, 80% by Day 60" is. Without measurable signal targets and dates, recovery becomes vibes — and vibes can't be reviewed.
Third: some partners aren't recoverable. Pretending otherwise burns the PSM, burns budget, and produces a worse churn than a graceful exit would.
The red-flag taxonomy
A red flag fires recovery — but which flag determines which diagnostic branch matters most.
| Red flag | Leading-indicator strength | Most-likely root cause |
|---|
| Usage collapse (>30% WoW drop) | Strong, fast | Implementation health, calendar artifact, or product friction |
| Sponsor change / departure | Strong, slow-burn | Sponsorship gap; renewal at risk |
| Rostering / data crisis | Strong, fast | Implementation health; often masquerades as product complaint |
| Escalated support ticket (esp. to leadership) | Strong | Product fit OR implementation health |
| Vendor-comparison signal ("we're looking at X") | Strong, leading | External pressure; can be defensive or genuine |
| Mid-contract financial pressure on the partner | Medium | External pressure; ESSER cliff, L&D budget squeeze |
| Leadership skepticism signal (new exec questions value) | Strong, slow-burn | Sponsorship; value-evidence gap |
| 21+ days of zero meaningful touchpoints (active season) | Medium, leading | PSM-side gap, not partner-side — handle internally first |
The same red flag can fire from different root causes; the diagnostic decides the remedy.
The 4-hypothesis diagnostic (run in parallel)
Before any remedy ships, the PSM runs four hypotheses in parallel — not sequentially. Sequential diagnosis takes weeks; parallel diagnosis takes days.
Hypothesis A — Product fit
Is the product actually doing what the partner needs it to do?
- Re-read the success plan; have the partner-stated goals shifted?
- Has the product surface changed in a way that removed something the partner depended on?
- Has a competing product appeared that solves the same problem with a better fit for the partner's segment?
Hypothesis B — Implementation health
Is the product working but the partner can't use it properly?
- Rostering / SSO / SIS-LMS sync issue (see
rostering-data-quality.md)
- Train-the-trainer cascade collapse (the trained champions left; their replacements weren't trained)
- Calendar artifact (a state-testing window suppressing the signal — see
adoption-sequencing-k12.md)
- Feature-tier mismatch (partner is on the wrong tier for what they're trying to do)
Hypothesis C — Sponsorship
Has the buying committee changed in a way that we missed?
- Named sponsor lost (left org, demoted, sidelined) — see
executive-sponsor-mapping.md
- Champion lost — single-thread failure
- New skeptic-in-position arrived with authority
- Ghost-sponsor pattern (named sponsor never engaged; we only discovered it now)
Hypothesis D — External pressure
What's happening to the partner organization that has nothing to do with us?
- District / school / department budget cut (ESSER cliff, enrollment decline, L&D-cuts pattern)
- Org-wide tool consolidation initiative ("we're cutting 30% of our tools")
- New executive with an agenda that includes vendor review
- Regulatory / compliance change forcing a vendor-comparison exercise
The diagnostic output is a written hypothesis ranking — which of the four is most likely, what evidence supports it, what would falsify it. Default to written (team constitution §3 #9).
The time-bound recovery plan
The plan has 30 / 60 / 90 day signal targets. Each target is:
- Measurable — the signal itself, the source query, the comparison baseline
- Time-bound — a specific date, not "Q3"
- Owned — a named person on each side
- Conditional-on — what the partner has to do AND what we have to do for the target to materialize
Day 30 — recoverable signal
The earliest point at which a measurable signal can show whether the recovery is taking hold. Examples by red-flag type:
- Usage collapse → active-user count back to 60% of baseline
- Rostering crisis → sync running clean for 14 consecutive days
- Sponsor change → new sponsor confirmed engaged in at least 2 touchpoints
- Escalated ticket → resolution accepted by the partner, in writing
- Vendor-comparison signal → joint conversation with the named decision-maker confirming we're still in consideration
Day 60 — sustained signal
The signal is not a one-time spike. It's holding.
- Usage at 75-80% of baseline, sustained 30 days
- Sync clean 45 days
- New sponsor has attended a real working session (not a courtesy intro)
- No second escalation
- DPA / DPA-renewal or RFP positioning has progressed
Day 90 — value-restoration signal
The original success-plan outcomes are back on track (or a replan has been mutually accepted).
- Usage at 90%+ of baseline
- A new outcome metric is materializing
- The renewal conversation is back on a normal play (not a recovery sub-play)
- OR (legitimate alternative) — the partner and PSM jointly agree the original success plan needs revision, and the new plan is written
If Day 30 or Day 60 misses, the plan branches — either to a deeper recovery (escalation, harder remedy) or to a churn-prep workflow.
Escalation criteria
The PSM doesn't own the entire recovery alone. Escalation is part of the play, not failure of it.
| Trigger | Escalate to |
|---|
| Diagnostic hypothesis confirms product-fit gap that requires roadmap visibility | Product leadership |
| Sponsor change requires re-onboarding of an exec | Success leadership + the vendor exec sponsor |
| Day 30 signal target missed | Success leadership review |
| Day 60 signal target missed | Vendor exec sponsor engaged with partner exec sponsor |
| Vendor-comparison signal becomes "we've issued an RFP" | Vendor exec sponsor + AE if applicable; defense play activates |
| Legal-relevant dispute (DPA breach, FERPA / state-privacy claim, contract dispute) | Counsel — mandatory; PSM does NOT freelance the response |
| Partner explicitly signals intent to non-renew | Churn-prep workflow activates (see below) |
| Recovery plan has missed 2+ targets in a row | "Is this recoverable?" rule (see below) |
Anti-pattern: the PSM running a 6-month recovery alone because escalation feels like failure. Escalation is the play. Not escalating turns a 90-day recovery into a 9-month one.
The "is this recoverable?" rule
After Day 60 (or earlier if multiple targets miss), the PSM runs this check honestly:
| Condition | Implication |
|---|
| Sponsor lost AND no replacement willing to engage | Leading indicator of unrecoverable. Move toward churn-prep. |
| Product-fit gap AND no roadmap visibility AND partner has named a competitor | Unrecoverable in current form. Negotiate graceful exit or major restructure. |
| External pressure (budget cut) AND no scoped-down option fits partner's remaining budget | Unrecoverable at current scope. Offer scope-down or graceful exit. |
| Implementation health AND partner-side champion has the will to fix | Recoverable. Continue the play. |
| Sponsorship gap AND new sponsor identified AND willing to re-engage | Recoverable. Pivot to re-onboarding. |
| Two consecutive Day-X signal misses with no honest explanation | Possibly unrecoverable. Escalate; run the rule again at next checkpoint. |
The rule is a forcing function for honesty, not a gate that has to be passed. The point is to surface the choice between "more recovery" and "graceful exit" at the right time — not at T-7.
Churn-prep workflow (when not recoverable)
When the answer is "not recoverable," the play doesn't end. The PSM's job is now graceful exit + reference protection + learning capture.
- Confirm internally first — success leadership + AE (if applicable) + vendor exec sponsor agree the partner is unrecoverable. Don't telegraph to the partner before this.
- Graceful exit conversation — partner-facing, owned by the senior on the vendor side (often the exec sponsor, not the PSM). Acknowledges reality; doesn't gaslight the partner with false-positive framing.
- Off-boarding migration support — data export, transition timeline, end-of-license technical steps. Coordinated with the
partner-profile-curator so the durable record is closed cleanly.
- Reference protection — even an exiting partner's word-of-mouth matters in their segment. Generous off-boarding earns "they were professional when we left," which preserves the brand. Stingy off-boarding earns the opposite.
- No surprise commercial actions — no last-minute fees, no auto-renew traps, no contractual gotchas. The cheap-feeling moves at exit get remembered for years.
- Learning capture — see below.
Anti-pattern: the PSM treating churn-prep as the AE's problem. The PSM owns the quality of the exit; the AE owns the commercial close.
The post-recovery learning capture
Every recovery — successful, partial, or churn — feeds the play library. Without this step, the play library never gets smarter.
Capture, in writing, to the partner profile and to a shared lessons file:
- What fired the red flag — which signal, which date, what was its leading-indicator strength
- What the diagnostic concluded — which of the four hypotheses, on what evidence
- What worked — which remedy moved which signal, with timing
- What nearly worked — what was almost-enough but missed
- Did the play library predict this — was there a play that should have been written and wasn't
- What does the play library need — new red-flag trigger; new remedy; new escalation criterion; refined "is this recoverable?" rule
Surface the learnings at the next play-library review (quarterly default). The /wrap slash command in this marketplace is the lightweight path to push a generalized version to the shared scenarios bank.
Anti-patterns this skill flags
- Offering price relief without diagnosis. Discount-as-default removes a lever you may need later, signals desperation, and rarely fixes the actual cause.
- Generic "let me know how we can help" comms in a red account. Boilerplate is a smell (team constitution §3 #11) and in a red account it reads as evasion.
- Recovery plans without time bounds. "We'll work on it" is not a plan.
- No escalation criteria. PSM running a 6-month recovery alone is a PSM-as-hero anti-pattern; success leadership exists for this.
- Sequential diagnosis (test hypothesis A for two weeks, then B, then C) — by the time you've finished, the partner has churned.
- Treating churn-prep as failure. A graceful exit is a successful execution of recovery's last branch. Stinginess at exit is the failure.
- Skipping the learning capture. The play library never improves.
- Pretending the partner is recoverable past Day 60 when two targets have missed and the sponsor is gone. Hope is not a play.
- Telegraphing churn-prep to the partner before internal alignment. Confusing for the partner; weakens the eventual conversation.
Hygiene checklist
Before declaring a recovery play "executing":
Before declaring a recovery play "complete":
When NOT to invoke
- The signal is broken — not the partner. Run
rostering-data-quality.md before declaring a red flag.
- The signal is a calendar artifact — see
adoption-sequencing-k12.md (e.g., a December engagement drop in K-12 may be school break, not partner pain).
- The partner is in a normal renewal window with no actual red flag — use
renewal-play-design.md instead.
- A red flag fired but the diagnostic shows the root cause is internal-to-vendor (PSM coverage gap, support response time) — the recovery is internal, not partner-facing. Don't run the recovery play; fix the internal gap.
Refresh triggers
- A pattern of recoveries succeeding at Day 30 but failing at Day 90 — the sustained-signal target isn't being designed deep enough
- A pattern of misdiagnosis — one of the four hypotheses is being missed systematically
- A new red-flag pattern emerges that the taxonomy doesn't cover
- An exit that should have been recoverable but wasn't — learning-capture surfaces the gap
- Escalation criteria firing too early or too late — leadership review tunes the thresholds
References
